As I have said before, and as recent events underscore, stupidity (or the failure to see what is front of you and connect the simplest of dots) is the Trump defense. It was over as soon as we learned of the meeting in NCY’s Trump Tower with the Russian promising dirt on Hillary. But Trump thinks that that was no crime to conspire with an adversary against your domestic opponent. No matter that none other than Donald Sr. concocted several contradictory cover stories! He does not see that it was a crime in the first place, no matter what if anything came out of it.

Those who think Trump and/or his famous “base” is/are to blame for the current state of affairs (by the way, these attacks such as the pipe bomber are going to get worse) need to step back a bit for some perspective. While it true – as I have written – that Trump is incredibly stupid and his hardcore supporters are also misinformed and too credulous, it is sheer fantasy believing that his removal will solve what ails us. While his removal from office, and in particular, the social movement that must arise to defeat him and his “administration” needs to happen and would be a good thing indeed, showing Trump and his ilk from the White House in and of itself and especially if he is ousted for narrow reasons would not by itself be all that productive and helpful. Everyday he demonstrates one new reason or more than one why he is unfit; the majority of people are outraged by his behavior. And outraged they are right to be! They expect someone who leads them to at least try to lead us and they expect that a person in that role will not make a habit, as he does, of breaking norms and further dividing us and enflaming tensions instead of trying to calm them and bridge them. Anyone who hopes for that now, however, has not been paying attention! Trump doesn’t choose to be a divider; he is just doing what comes naturally to him – he is being himself and what got him there in the first place!

Let us again imagine if Hillary Clinton were now president – in fact, let us consider why she lost the presidency to someone as incompetent as Trump. Some people who voted for him have come to regret that choice, enough to have altered the outcome, but most of Trump’s supporters remain in his camp. You no doubt have asked yourself why.

I would say that Trump’s appeal signals both naivete and sophistication at the same time. The naivete comes through in the majority worldwide thinking that merely by voting we can change basic outcomes that are systemic in nature. The sophistication comes in the various forms of hostility to neoliberal policies, of which Clinton is, and has come to stand for, its ultimate representative and leader. Her rejection at the polls was in substantial part an explicit rejection of neoliberal policies. Bigotry towards a woman was involved, it is true, but it’s not mainly that. Racism is also involved, but Hillary herself was not to blame for that, rather who the Democrats stand for.

When those who face outnumber you and want your blood, the best advice is for you to take on their leader and beat him, one-on-one. If you prevail, the rest of the crowd with him will shrink away because you’ve defeated their strongest already and thus, you don’t actually end up having to fight them all at once.

Eemember that piece of advice now, when things might look bad temporarily and that the wrong side seems to be winning.

Remember who leads them. Remember how stupid and atypical in a negative way he is. Remember how divisive – he seems insincere when he tries to be a unifying force - because he gains from confusion and fear.

So the Rapist-in-Chief and the GOP got their way, and the Supreme Court stands revealed as more partisan than ever, shedding and shredding the mockery of impartiality in favor of ramrodding through their anti-choice ‘jurist” by all means necessary. And to do so, they had to further employ the fiction of a disinterested FBI and of course the Supreme Court, where the “rule of law” supposedly reigns supreme, as a vituperative and unapologetic drunkard and assaulter of women squeaked in.

Kavanaugh the victim? We all saw how the attempted rape of Christine Blasey continued in their attacks on now Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, during and after her testimony. Some people felt moved by her unshakable witness but then found Kavanaugh credible too, now channeling his inner Trump, angrily denying it all, as if all males and all of any gender, the only true way to measure how pervasive males raping females was somehow all done with and over with, the truest measure of it now, the drinking jock taken advantage by women. It’s laughable how distorted that is, not tbat false cries of rape do happen at times, but she had what to gain by her reluctantly overcoming her fear of flying, and appearing before the men and the Klieg lights, and then the vengeance of Judge Kavanaugh and the POTUS before Mississippians’ adoring crowds!?

So the Rapist-in-Chief and the GOP got their way, and the Supreme Court stands revealed as more partisan than ever, shedding and shredding the mockery of impartiality in favor of ramrodding through their anti-choice ‘jurist” by all means necessary. And to do so, they had to further employ the fiction of a disinterested FBI and of course the Supreme Court, where the “rule of law” supposedly reigns supreme, as a vituperative and unapologetic drunkard and assaulter of women squeaked in.

Kavanaugh the victim? We all saw how the attempted rape of Christine Blassey continued in their attacks on now Dr. Christine Blassey Ford continued, during and after her testimony. Some people felt moved by her unshakable witness but then found Kavanaugh credible too, now channeling his inner Trump, angrily denying it all, as if all males and all of any gender, as if the only true way to measure how pervasive males raping females was somehow all done with and over with, the truest measure of it now, the drinking jock taken advantage by women. It’s laughable how distorted that is, not tbat false cries of rape do happen at times, but she had what to gain by her reluctantly overcoming her fear of flying, and appearing before the men and the Klieg lights, and then the vengeance of Judge Kavanaugh and the POTUS before Mississippians’ adoring crowds!?

Let us consider, for a few moments, that Judge Kavanaugh is being unjustly charged by some crying rape, and he didn’t do it. What should he do? He could, to begin with, consider the situation and his options. We know that most rape victims are telling the truth, because they must run a gauntlet of objections and disbelievers, they are retraumatized in the process and most but not all are telling the truth. We know that Dr. Ford in this case says she is “terrified,” has a fear of flying and was reluctant to testify and she and her family had to move to an undisclosed location because of numerous death threats. Her life and that of rape victims in general, are forever disrupted and changed. Instead of outrage that he is being unjustly charged the judge might say something like this: I didn’t do it but I am sorry that you and other victims of alleged or actual rape, must experience such trauma, and there is far too much of it and it is very unbalanced where women continue to treated this way, and I will do what I can do to help.

The best and the worst were on display. A pattern emerges that is essentially independent of how you might feel about this case. I say “essentially” since we can never really start out with a blank slate in a highly charged case as this one and where the stakes are so high. But we can objectively note certain things. Before I state the ones I see, I will tell you an old lawyers’ jest: “If the law favors you, emphasize the law. If the facts favor you, then feature the facts. If neither favors you, then pound on the table and yell a lot.”

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 30 Sep 2018 16:28:41 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/what-faked-outrage-looks-like.htmlFighting for the Truth: Does It Matter?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/fighting-for-the-truth-does-it-matter.html
Fighting for the Truth: What Does It Matter?

By Dennis Loo (9/16/18)

Truth, for some, it is true, does not matter, because they make their money off of and/or they are more comfortable when the truth is being obscured.

Some look at this and conclude that this is the way the world works: money makes the world go ‘round, they say. One can always find people to fulfill that expectation, but does money make the world go ‘round; it surely characterizes some people but is it the essential nub of human existence, without which we would not be human?

It is true that those who govern us believe it, in that they seem to revel in their belief, since it proves then that they at least must be successes. But does it even characterize their lives mainly? Do material things and having more of them make you satisfied? When presented with a choice between the love and life of your child or your spouse and all your material things, which comes first? Which comes first: respect by your peers or the size of your bank accounts? If you choose the latter over the former, you have some company in that, but would most people agree with that? Don’t most people say and act as if their families’ life and love come first? Even the infamously self-centered Trump might end up choosing his family over the country. Certainly, Manafort did.

This is what humanity’s mission has been from the very beginning: to determine what is objectively true and eventually discard that which is not.

Trump and his supporters say “your president has done nothing wrong” and Giuliani signals that Mueller’s report, whenever it becomes available, will be censored in part by the White House. If Trump were innocent, then why does he try at every turn, to stop the inquiry? Why does he try to protect Michael Flynn from the FBI? Why does he try to make the FBI his (open) play thing? Why does he threaten to fire Sessions, Rothstein, Mueller, and actually fire Comey as well as many others who have left or been fired? Doesn’t Trump want to clear his name of any suspicion by letting any inquiry go on to unearth the truth? Doesn’t he want any doubts about Russian influence through cyberwarfare and false fronts to be in this nation exposed and rooted out? That is, if he were actually not guilty and there was such a thing as an investigation in order to determine what is true through that process?

I am reminded of an argument that a reader of my book Globalization and the Demolition of Society’s Introduction had with me. In that Introduction, I systematically take apart the godfather of neoliberalism, Frederick Hayek. As part of that critique, I draw out the implications of what Hayek says, and this reader (of just the Introduction since Amazon let him read that much free) objects to my doing that: complaining that Hayek never said this and that. Of course, Hayek doesn’t directly state some of those things because then you’d know how ridiculous he is being, and moreover, one doesn’t always draw out what one is saying and what it leads to in any case. The argument I make is in part a demonstration of inferential reasoning, and this reader regards that as impermissible, as if one can only say things directly and explicitly, as if nuance and connotation don’t exist, as if one can have a fire without any smoke, as if we were to cut off an arm as superfluous of our language, as if you say things and there is never any ambiguity, ever, as though there is denotation, but never any connotation, implying nothing ever.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 06 Sep 2018 20:09:49 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/if-he-did-nothing-wrong.htmlHow Do We Know?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/how-do-we-know.html
How Do We Know?

This is Part 4 of a Series

By Dennis Loo (8/25/18)

The title of this article is part of what’s called epistemology: how do we know what we know, or at least, think we know? According to those who still consider themselves Trump fans, their answer to their epistemology might be that they believe it because Trump says so. Trump himself believes something to be so because he feels so and in fact we have to go back in time when America was unchallenged Numero Uno in the world, when women were known and valued (or not) based exclusively on certain physical attributes and as trophies (or not) to white men and when blacks and other minorities “knew their place” to find a place where Trump’s psyche resides. In other words, we have to go to a mythical place and time to satisfy Trump that America is great again.

How is this for a way of getting closer to the truth: the Great Leader says so and he in turn feels it in his gut?

The point I have been making, and why I am so confident that Trump will not even finish his first term, is that in a protracted contest between spin versus those who hew to empirical reality and reason as their test of truth, is that the latter will win in the end, if humanity’s historic mission is to continue. What is that historic mission? If we are to find out what is true through testing it against objective reality, which has characterized us from the beginning and will never go away, and that reality is basically, although not exclusively, separate and autonomous from us, especially individually, then it is not just made up by us anymore. If you or I were to die this instant, the world would continue on without us, maybe the worse for it for our not being there – and maybe a little different - but still…

Despite all kinds of advice from within and from without the White House, despite good or not so good intentions, from the solicited to the non-solicited, Trump is convinced as he has always been that he is right, no matter what. He is utterly incapable of any insight into his soul since he has no soul and has zero insight. What a conundrum!

The man acts like what he is: a grade-C reality TV star and he is capable of learning nothing or living up to his office since he is deluded into thinking he already knows everything there is to know. He is, according to his own words, a “stable genius.” Real geniuses generally know that what they know compared to what there is to know, there is a huge gap, that one should learn from others, and that “stable” and “genius” tend to not occur together in the same person, in fact, a pretty good case could be made that genius and depression tend to co-occur.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 26 Aug 2018 22:23:24 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-can-t-help-it.htmlTo Those Who Say All Presidents Liehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/to-those-who-say-all-presidents-lie.html
To Those Who Say All Presidents Lie

Part 2 of a Series

By Dennis Loo (8/23/18)

I was in a conversation last night in which everyone at the table but me agreed that most presidents have affairs and all politicians lie. It’s not that I disagree with the premise, because I don’t, but to use this to then excuse Trump for what he is doing is wrong.

First of all, those who voted for him did so because he was supposed to be different. You can’t have it both ways: you can’t claim that he is different and then say he is exactly the same. Second, while I have no love lost for the lies that Democrats tell, Trump’s relationship to truth is radical and extreme: he values truth not at all. At least most people will admit to the existence of facts and the law. Trump and his people do not do even that. They make up stuff all the time and he directly contradicts himself willy-nilly, as if it doesn’t matter, as if it doesn’t matter to commit felonies against campaign finance laws.

By declaring this, Rudy Giuliani inadvertently revealed what their troops – Trump et al – have been up to all along and why they are going to go down. “He said, she said,” Giuliani says, by which he means: there’s his version of the truth, and there is her version of the truth, and who knows which is true? Humanity has never been ultimately agnostic on this question: it has always decided on this, and usually for the better. Even those who claim otherwise, those who say that we make up reality and reality doesn’t exist by itself to be discovered, live their day-to-day lives as if this is not so: they assume that where they parked their car is not just in their imagination and it is stable. They must live as if things and processes are real or else they would quickly get into trouble.

I recently asked a Trump supporter a question. I said, “When you step into an airplane, you assume that those who fly the plane and built it studied aerodynamics, the science of flight, right?” He would not answer me. He just kept repeating “the wall. Give me the wall.”

Tony Schwartz, the real writer of The Art of the Deal, has said that what you see when you see Trump is exactly what you get. This is because Trump has no inner life. Trump is as shallow as can be, because he has no functioning superego, no inner compass to tell him when he does wrong. Our sense of shame, which most of us have, is the basis for our getting along with others, our empathy, our ability to put ourselves in other’s shoes and imagine what it like to be in them so that we can show some compassion for others. This absence of an inner life, this inability of Trump to show empathy, is why he can imitate those who are disabled and think it funny, that so upset, for example, actor Meryl Streep, whose stock and trade is putting herself in other’s shoes, which makes her all the more sensitive about this failing of Trump’s. Why the infamous Access Hollywood tape would have shamed anybody else to bow out of the race. Not Trump!

This in why Trump so far has been temporarily made stronger by his inability to feel shame; because normally feelings of shame are enough to get a person in line with others. Shame is our way of feeling bad that we have hurt others and that they matter. Even Nixon realized eventually that he must resign. No such luck in Trump’s case. Consider his reaction to that meeting his son and others took in NYC with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary. Every politician does that, according to Trump. It doesn’t even occur to him that this was conspiring with a rival foreign power, and therefore verbotem. Why that meeting alone, for their taking the meeting for the reasons they took it, no matter whether they got what they were promised or not, is reason enough by itself to get rid of him and them!

There are certain processes that are salient at work that Trump’s attitude towards truth – that is, absolutely no regard at all – that not only isn’t it mainly his doing or his fault, though he clearly benefits from it, but the outcome of neoliberal policies that abandon the vast majority of people:

Since the basis for people to cooperate, to behave normatively (for example, to abide by the law) is constantly being constantly and relentlessly undermined by neoliberal regimes, and since, for the dispossessed, even less of what was available to them under welfare states with Keynesian policies is now available to them, governments must rely more heavily on coercive means with spending on ‘security’ (law enforcement, military, immigration control, prisons, and so on) rising inexorably.[1]

Let me first bring you up-to-date in case you haven’t yet heard. Trump’s spokesman, Rudy Giuliani, is now publicly saying two things that are explosive. First, he is narrowly defining Russian collusion as a crime only if Trump paid the Russians to meddle in our presidential race. The cooperation between the Russian and the Trump campaign and Trump’s knowledge that such cooperation does not constitute collusion, the way that anyone else but Giuliani defines collusion. This advanced warning can only mean one thing: that Michael Cohen and/or Robert Mueller’s team will soon bring forth the irrefutable evidence that such collusion exists.

What both the Republicans and Democrats having been doing over the last almost forty years is trying to have spin win out over empirical fact: “are you going to believe your lyin’ eyes, or what I am telling you?” They do so as an inevitable consequence of the nature of neoliberal policies, since both of them are advancing that, where what they are doing is contrary to the interests of the vast majority so they must undermine the truth of what they are doing. The Democrats, since part of their social base is steeped longer and more thoroughly in science, must say somethings that Republicans would never do. For example, Obama claimed he would close Gitmo and he made speeches about that, including falsely blaming Congress for his failure to close Gitmo. But he never needed Congress’ approval to close Gitmo! He could have done it himself over any Congressional objections. By comparison, Congress subpoenaed the White House to tell it why they were killing thousands with drones, and Obama simply refused to explain himself and continued using drones anyway.

What neither side wants is for you to deduce from what they are doing, what is the truth. And so they want you NOT to use inference – where you are not told something directly, but conclude so based on everything else. This is how, by the way, we are finding so many solar systems that could support life now: by noticing that if a planet revolves around its sun, there must be a very slight diminution of that sun’s light and energy at regular intervals.

It is sometimes very helpful to reverse-engineer something, so you take a certain outcome and look at the steps that would have to have been taken to end up with that result. We will look at Trump's behavior towards Putin in this regard. This article is going to be in parts.

The furor over Trump's Helsinki press conference so far continues, in which the US commander-in-chief openly sided with Putin and against his own intelligence agencies. This would be unthinkable for a thinking stooge because he would not be believable to his own side for doing that. However, we know that Trump is mentally challenged (shall we charitably say?) and he is certainly of capable of doing and saying stupid things. We have seen him do this many, many times. He is not a reader and non-readers consequently make a lot of spelling errors, the latest spelling error being the "No Colusion" (sic) Error by Trump.

The separation of children from their parents and the sheer stupidity of Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy (which is not a stand-alone error of his but a commission that he frequently makes, as he does not understand that there are consequences to everything you do) makes this reprint all the more relevant now, first published October 9, 2017:

Trump believes that simply saying certain things and doing certain things will result in what he wants being done – but it’s not so simple. This is irrespective of any mental imbalance he might, and probably does, have.

I am going to talk about this as if he is completely in charge of his senses. I know that there are lots of reasons to think he is suffering from early dementia and various personality disorders, but what is more to the point, Trump is not alone in confounding saying and doing, and over-simplifying the reaction to that. And I am not just talking about his followers.

He believes, for example, that by declaring that “disrespect” for the flag, opposition to white supremacy, and hostility towards (or just suspicion of) law enforcement can be ended by fiat: such as during a pep rally when he speaks to loyalists, when he tweets it out, or when he signs an Executive Order.

The simplest answer to that question, of course, is: has it? Are we safer? Is it better? Are "we" winning?

The answer to that is obviously no; we are more divided ever.

Everybody sees that, no matter what side you are on.

In declaring where he stands, and being totally unashamed of it, he embodies the sentiments emotionally of those who feel that “things have gone too far,” that blacks are “uppity,” that women no longer know their place, that immigrants are too many and overrunning true Americans, that being “politically correct” has exceeded all reason, that the America they knew – white and Christian and you could get a decent job with a high school education – is being changed.

Since Trump does not have to do more than be who he is for his fans, then no matter what he does, he is theirs. He is now and forever to be, one of them. That is why his approval rating, even though he is more unpopular than any modern president at this stage, has a rock bottom that it will not go below. He will likely lose a few more percentages before this is over, but his most hardcore supporters will never leave him.

For those who like this man and who they identify so powerfully with: he is one of them. This is why it is almost hopeless to talk to his hardcore supporters because they do not judge him the way others do – that he should be at least competent. They don’t evaluate him by that criteria. His inabilities are legion, but even if they were paying attention to his manifest unfitness, which he shows multiple times per day, which they largely dismiss away or pay no attention to, still what loyalists value is that he speaks for them and is like them in so many ways. Getting rid of Trump is like saying to his hardcore followers who will go down with the ship: you are not right, you are not valid, you are not acceptable, you are not competent at this.

Still, let me be clear, he will go, probably through resignation, probably by the Russian thing resulting in Mueller indictments, probably in the next few months, with a presidential pardon not saving them from state charges, probably with him citing his resignation as a means to shield his family from harm, all the while citing it as more evidence that he has been conspired against, the victim always of the “greatest political witch hunt in history.”

***

I want to turn away from Trump hardcore fans now to others who should know better. As I said before, it has become popular to conflate saying and intending with actually doing. These are, however, different things, and should not be confused. They can be related to each other, but they are not equivalent. In the age of the Internet, talk has become very cheap. Perhaps that is part of it. Perhaps some of what the ruling class has been doing in undermining reality through their rhetoric has infected even revolutionary ranks too.

The heart of dialectics teaches us that anything at all that exists, only can be known or be in existence in the first place because it exists in relation to other things that are different in some way from it. If it didn't, then it would not exist. Pure good, which God is supposed to be, cannot exist and will not exist ever without its opposite, pure evil, or Satan, if you care to call him/it that. All those who pursue a pure state that way are doomed to fail, such as a heavenly state that exists without evil. This is not to say that you cannot change things, for better or worse, because you can, but the idea of an absolute state of being, is impossible and will always be so. Try to imagine "left" without "right" or "sound" without "silence." You cannot because they only have meaning because of their opposite. Dialectics is not just useful to know; dialectics actually explain - and are - reality. Without dialectics, nothing could exist. You can grasp dialectics, or you can reject it, but doing the latter produces a lot of frustration and counter-productive results.

The main focus of this article is about, though, how there is always a reaction to actions undertaken, which is a dynamic that Trump ignores at his ongoing peril, so he is constantly being entangled in the reaction that inevitably ensues. He thinks he can just do and say what he wants. He was taught by his Dad that issuing commands equal strength, but he always ends up doing damage to himself by antagonizing people as a result. This trait might well be his most salient, more than the fact of his fragile ego and more than his anger. The simplemindedness of it all boggles the imagination! Let’s take the Wall, for example, that he claims he still wants to build – by just printing money, one of his fans claims, since the idea now that Mexico will pay for it themselves is no longer believable to those who have a brain. Or Trump’s attitude towards women: mirrors to his vanity who he can do what he wants with, just “grab ‘em,” he says. Or his attitude towards minorities, that they are servants and “good people” too were marching with torches in Charlottesville and giving the Nazi salute.

Sure. Sure, they were there. Decent folks among the neo-Nazis. Sure Mr. President. Keep it up. It will be eventually your undoing.

The PTB rule not only through their use of force, they also rule by their dominance over ideas. People have a set of ideas that are drummed into them from the time they are little; they hear that same set of ideas constantly in popular culture, from political figures, and even from most of their teachers. These ideas are so pervasive by now that even among those who are explicitly opposed to the PTB tend to end up relying upon those same ideas somewhere in their opposition.

To cite one example: no wonder that it seems worthless to try something different in social arrangements, if it’s “human nature” to be selfish. If before you start you think you will eventually end up where you started; why go through all that trouble, if you are doomed to end up with some version of the status quo!

Yet the bourgeois version of reality is hopelessly skewed and riddled with self-contradictions. It’s not as if there are plenty examples that you can point to that buttress their version; there are. But as a guiding philosophy that you actually live your life by, it’s wrong.

Charles Blow, a NY Times columnist, wrote helpfully on June 24, 2018, of “White Extinction Anxiety,” and how Trump is a US herald of that ignominious trend.

I write my students, who have unprecedented access to data via the Internet, that there are those who would knowingly mislead you because they profit from your being kept uninformed, some of it literally in financial terms, some of it by spreading delusions and confusion. People generally are much brighter than they are given credit for, but they do not defeat that ignorance easily. They must work very hard for genuinely deep cognition, and, for instance, I have never seen such a bifurcated sample as the 174 students in Introduction to Sociology I had online last quarter: those who followed my advice and took me at my word did very well (and some of them were shocked at their new-found ability to think) and those who didn’t follow my advice, got C’s, Ds, and Fs.

When you are daily deluged by multiple falsehoods emanating from the White House, it is challenging, to say the least, to keep your bearings, in this virtual torrent of lies from the highest offices in the land. And it doesn’t help any when his famous base hews to him, with many of them: come hell or high water.

Let me step back a moment to consider the situation. Yes, lots of firings and resignations have already occurred, with no end for that in sight. Yes, major issues are being neglected, ignored or worsened by him. Yes, he threatens alliances, foreign (especially Russian) penetration through cyberwarfare, he is separating families at the border, and the very rule of law itself. Yes, he is a catastrophe. And it will get worse, even as many of us wonder: how can it get any worse?

When a sociopath succeeds “in passing,” that is, is not seen as what they truly are – self-centered and not caring about you at all – they successfully pass as not a sociopath, that is, like most of us – caring about others. Sociopaths do this instead of its opposite for a reason: the majority of us care about others. What happens to you on an everyday level if you don’t use “please” and “thank you” in whatever language you say it in? You are isolated.

There are those, however, who preach that the sociopathic way is the human way, that we are in our essence, selfish and greedy. Who has not heard that said? Indeed, if you ask most people they will happily repeat what is now so widespread it counts as a truism: that most people are really at bottom selfish.

Much our economics are based on precisely that notion, called “homo economicus.” And in politics it’s widely accepted as true and valid. (Of course, if we were truly mainly selfish, and most of us were just as narcissistic as Donald Trump, then we couldn’t be a society in the first place. No sociopaths would succeed “in passing” and Trump’s spectacular indifference to others’ condition would not raise anyone’s eyebrows, let alone the majority of people who now find his act offensive on the most basic level.

Here I am going to elaborate on the opportunity that this ruling class fight over Trump’s presidency presents. If they – the RCP - were to recognize what a tremendous opportunity this is, and not miss out on this through a stereotyped response, then they could go very far with this. Instead of characterizing Trump as a “juggernaut” which they are doing, and as a result the RCP siding with bourgeois anti-fascist forces, the RCP were to see that Trump is actually tarnishing the bourgeoisie’s image through his overt extremism, and thus alienating most Americans and helping by so doing to discredit the bourgeoisie as a whole and the system that produces a Donald J. Trump, the RCP could turn this into a constitutional crisis and then perhaps wrest something more out of this. The RCP seems right now driven more by righteous outrage rather than taking a scientific attitude.

When there is a scandal, other forces that are normally suppressed and impotent, have a chance to emerge and exert influence far beyond their numbers. Such a situation now exists potentially.

The fight we want is not an anti-fascist fight per se, although that is an element in this situation, but it is not the situation’s essence. If you look at the US presidents from Reagan to the present, what stands out is that regardless of which party holds the White House – and Congress for that matter – is that the most recent president and the corresponding Congress and Supreme Court are overall worse than the last. The progression from what Reagan did, to today, is that the most recent administration is much more right-wing and dictatorial than those who came before him. Obama, for example, was worse than George W. Bush and considerably worse than Reagan and his Vice President, ex-CIA director George H.W. Bush, George W.’s dad who was a one-term president.

John Brennan, who was CIA Director under Obama and personally helped kill thousands (including hundreds of children) through Obama's drone kill list, tweeted Trump, in a war of words within the ruling class.

There is an opening by the unfolding Trump scandals that the Left could take advantage of if they recognize the opportunity and are not barking up the wrong tree. Left to itself, however, this increasingly bitter intra-ruling class fight, will only result in Trump’s replacement, and a settling down from this scandalous regime.

This article is partially suggested by Trump calling the mainstream media (MSM) “an enemy of the people.” This has forced media, reluctantly I should say, into being more objective than they usually are, and more openly oppositional, than is their wont. Normally the MSM work more in concert with the White House, Congress, and the US Supreme Court, than they do so openly opposed to the utterances of those institutions, but by being called as the enemy so adamantly and often, and Trump et al so far out of step with easily verifiable facts so much, they have been shoved into a position they are not used to. One has only to go back to the New York Times’ Judith Miller’s case and Bush’s phony and illegal rush to war on Iraq to see this, or their fawning role re: Obama, to understand this.

With the notable exception of Fox News and people like Rush Limbaugh, who live in an alternative universe, driven mainly by resentment and a (unwarranted) sense of persecution, and not by facts, are having their day and have had their day … for yet awhile. But when people like Flynn start testifying, whether that is before a Congressional Committee or not, the right-wing’s news media filter will fall away, at least for some, because Flynn et al’s testimony become live news events in their own right, and less subject to the right-wing’s spin.

It is that where facts bump against the fabricated reality, and one side or the other’s going to prevail and I’m going to tell you why it has come to this. Trump himself has set himself up to take such a big fall by calling so many things “fake news” and denying so many obvious things, such as his and his family’s long and deep history with Russia. As I have said time and again, eventually he will no longer be able to deny his playing into Putin’s hands. Because what is really at stake here is the US’ continued role as the sole imperialist superpower and it can’t be that with Trump or even Pence in charge. The Empire doesn’t just run itself, and Trump in particular cannot administer it because to administer it requires highly developed bureaucracies, and bureaucracies run on written documents. Trump is pre-literate and his style is chaotic because he doesn’t read and probably has never read a whole book his entire adult life. Literacy is one of humankind’s great achievements, and we are working with someone so antediluvian because he doesn’t read and can’t.

I am subject as anyone to wondering why there are people who continue to stick with Trump, despite the evidence (or because of) his overt racism, extreme sexism, and incompetence, but the reason I have stressed that in the last analysis he will be forced to resign (probably this year), and Pence should follow not long after, is because the Russia thing will not and cannot be overlooked.

The RCP is barking up the wrong tree on this, I am afraid, as I have written, but the triumph of facts over manufactured reality will ultimately win out on this, if only because the US and Russia are rivals, and regardless of what Trump does, he cannot alter reality and what has happened.

Trump et al have gotten their way so much that some have gotten disoriented and discouraged. The impact of an all-right-wing media, all-the-time solo diet and the segregation into only that which you want to hear (which has also happened to other segments as well) and Obama’s failure to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine have had a far-rearching effect.

Because many of you have never heard of the Fairness Doctrine, here is a Wikipedia description of it:

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the Commission's view—honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the policy in 1987 and removed the rule that implemented the policy from the Federal Register in August 2011.

This doctrine, then, prevailed from 1949 till 1987, President Ronald Reagan’s last year, who was lobbied successfully to eliminate it - through a veto - by deep-pocketed right-wing interests who knew they couldn’t build their right-media empire if the Fairness Doctrine was still in effect.

I have a friend who wears a “All Refugees Are Welcome” button, that is something of a clue about where he stands with respect to Trump.

I kid him sometimes when I see him.

I say, in a sort of shorthand, “kicking and screaming.” What I mean is that they are going to have to take Trump kicking and screaming from the White House because he won’t understand that he is in so much trouble that he has to leave office.

The June 9, 2016 NY meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Vladimirovna Veselnitskaya and her Russian “friends” that Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort took in Trump Tower during the campaign is by itself enough. The admitted fact by Donald Jr. that he “loved it” that the Russians were offering Trump’s campaign help against Hillary, whether the meeting even took place and what was discussed is irrelevant to that fact.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 28 Mar 2018 02:19:58 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/first-trump-then-pence-kicking-and-screaming.htmlWhy the Current System is Wronghttp://www.dennisloo.com/Archived-Articles/why-the-current-system-is-wrong.html
Why the Current System is Wrong

By Dennis Loo (2/10/18) Revised by adding 2/11/18

I am going to clarify some things that bear underscoring. I will begin this by excerpting from a prior article of mine, the full implications of which may have escaped full notice.

Yet another distinction is helpful at this point: the difference between area specific knowledge and skills and more general awareness. When you are trained in area specific knowledge as, for example, in medical school, you are learning things that those who do not receive this training largely do not know. Your knowledge of that area is greater than that of others as a result. Even if hypothetically we exposed everyone to medical training, not everyone would acquire the same level of knowledge and skill as a result of that training. Some individuals would be better at this than others and some individuals would have a knack for this and others would not.

Likewise, learning how to be a carpenter draws upon a different skill set and some of those who would make good physicians would not make good carpenters, and vice versa. And so on. Area specific knowledge and talents, however, are not the same as the kind of general awareness that everyone would benefit from if they were trained for that. This is the general awareness that Durkheim is referring to when he advises that a liberal arts education should not be given to most of the working class.

If everyone, through the institutions of higher learning and/or through mass media - a radically different mass media than the currently existing mass media – received a general education about how things actually work in the political and economic arenas, then the existing division of labor would have to break down and be utterly transformed. If people learned how political and economic power were actually exercised, then they would not tolerate the gross inequities that now exist and are fostered. If political decisions were actually made through a process of real transparency and full consultation and debate, not just between the party bureaucracies’ designated spokespeople but through the entire society in mass meetings and smaller groupings everywhere, then the society would be radically altered.

There are several different threads that could be continued on the themes and topics so far in this series.

Since I concluded in Part 3 of this series that proof for some people will never suffice because their worldview is so radically different, I will just say one more thing about so-called proof(s) of god, and then move on to other matters. Proof of God’s non-existence will not satisfy some people after all – not so much because they can’t see the proof but because there are social reasons why they are believers.

St. Thomas Aquinas in the 1200’s offered up what he called five proofs of god. His proofs are as good as any since his time. The first – and, according to him, his strongest argument - of his proofs will suffice: No. 1, motion. Per Aquinas, we cannot have an infinite series; it must begin somewhere and that original mover is god. “Some things undoubtedly move, though cannot cause their own motion. Since, as Thomas believed, there can be no infinite chain of causes of motion, there must be a First Mover not moved by anything else, and this is what everyone understands by God.”

This is like throwing up your hands when you encounter something you can't deal with. Why can we not have an infinity? Why is throwing up your hands his "best argument"? Admittedly, they hadn't yet discovered infinity in the 13th Century, let alone come to terms with it. There are many people still who can't wrap their heads around infinity. But what is more difficult to believe: an omniscient, omnipresent, disembodied Spirit or infinity? We know that infinity exists. We don't have any proof that a God exists.

Contrary to St. Aquinas, there is no reason to reject out-of-hand as he does an infinite universe and every reason why the universe in some form must have always existed and be unbounded – even before the Big Bang - and thus does not have a beginning or a boundary beyond which it is not part of. A beginning and an end in fact make no sense. The only thing that makes sense is that the Universe is infinite and has always existed in some physical form.

Before I continue my exegesis of Marx’s 1888 germinal Theses on Feuerbach, a reminder: I am breaking with a tradition where the materialist part of materialist dialectics is emphasized and am stating unequivocally that dialectics are key between it and materialism. Both are important, but of the two, dialectics is more important overall then materialism. This has philosophical and real-world implications that I will shortly address.

But first, the rest of Theses:

Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.

Ludwig Feuerbach was a contemporary of Marx and he made a sensation when he argued that instead of God creating humankind, the reverse was true – humankind created god and religion. Feuerbach believed that knowing this would free humanity from religion’s hold. But as Marx points out, especially in the Fourth Thesis:

Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis.

But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis.

It is probably wise here for me to explain something implicit in this series. In philosophy, as Frederick Engels once said, there are basically two schools of, and in, philosophy: there is idealism and there is materialism. All that exists in philosophy is a variant of one or the other school.

We use these terms not in their ordinary forms but mean by idealism the way that Plato meant it - that any concrete object (if even they exist at all, since some idealists do not believe in real objects - really[1]), are first an idea. The leading ideas and those who embody those leading ideas, according to the Idealist School, make history. The idea of a chair, for example, precedes any real chair, according to Idealists. Thus, their name - ideas precede ideas' expression in material objects.

Materialism (again, I’m using the term in its philosophic sense), on the other hand, says that before you have a thought, you must first have a brain. In the case of a chair, a materialist would say that it probably originated from sitting on a tree stump, or log, or rock, or some such thing, and then the idea for a chair began from that. Material forces and/or material activity are generally primary over idealist ones, according to a materialist dialectician, although ideas play an important, though overall secondary, role.

For more on why there is or isn’t a purpose or meaning for something or someone within themselves as opposed to being an outside force, autonomously chosen by that person or "given" courtesy of and by a god figure: consider this – a purpose or meaning (especially in the philosophical sense such as “what purpose does my life serve?”) necessarily involves making a judgment or involves some kind of interpretation. For either to happen, at a level above fight or flight, means that that interpretation must occur outside of the thing itself. Interpretation though necessarily involves consciousness, does it not? Without interpretation, then a thing, process, or a person, is just a thing in itself, nothing more, but nothing less either. That, by the way, is a good thing, not bad.

Since there are differing levels of consciousness, a critical mass of neurons must assemble together, or else certain levels of consciousness are impossible. Self-consciousness, for example, only happens to certain species such as the great apes and not, for example, in insects.

It makes no sense, though I realize lots of people believe in it, that a perfect being with perfect knowledge of everything including himself and of what was, is, and all things that will ever be (the latter in at least many religions) who then has no physical presence (again, usually) – pure spirit, God – could have come into being ex nihilo – and in turn then created an imperfect world. It makes perfect sense, however, the other way around: that we created God in our image, rather than the other way around. We made Him perfect, all knowing, all powerful, and immortal, because we are none of these, but we wish we were.

“For something to have meaning (i.e., a purpose beyond itself) then something has to exist OUTSIDE of the universe, but it cannot, and not only by definition, but by the very nature of dialectics and existence itself. That is why ‘materialist dialectics’ is correct, but ‘dialectical materialism’ is not. The modifier here is ‘materialist’ not ‘dialectics.’’’

I was speaking at the time in a kind of philosophical shorthand. The section my friend asked about could actually be expanded into three books.

As a general statement of my view, let’s look at the first part: why do I say that purpose and meaning exist outside of the thing itself? The first and perhaps the best way to answer that takes us to a kind of Zen Buddhist understanding of reality: that is, anything or process is, on one level, if you withdraw your judgment or interpretation of it, merely is itself; it just is. It doesn’t, and you don’t have a purpose; they and you just are.

For the sake of clarity, I am going to do much of this in a dialogue format.

I have mentioned this before, and proceeded on that basis, but I am now making two points about this topic that I have not made previously so explicitly: dialectics make materialism possible, and are overall therefore more important than materialism, though materialism (in the philosophical, not commonsense meaning) is nevertheless indispensable; I shall be soon making a point here about different levels (e.g., individuals and the systems they are part of) and their relationship to each other. But first, the first point.

Matter in motion (materialism) does not predate dialectics, and here is why: you can only know of the existence of matter in motion, and even before consciousness, there must be a way of distinguishing different, contrasting things, always, because otherwise existence itself is impossible without it. Perhaps a better way of saying this is that there must have always been dialectics and existence and any other state is utterly impossible. Even if there was at one point a Big Bang, there had to have been something before that. Why do I say that?

I address this to Trump supporters but I am under no illusion that most of them will read this. It is too long for their taste anyway. Others, however, who no longer support Trump, or never supported him, will read me and when they get into discussions, or try to, with Trump loyalists, it is to them that I am mainly speaking. Because sooner or later, these questions come up and it is worth discussing them here and better understanding where we are and what future – if he doesn’t get us into a nuclear war first – is possible.

A further note – there is a lot of very important and novel arguments made here. Take your time and savor this.

In talking to those who still support Trump, one of the things that stands out is their view of media's role. "Why," they say, "do most of the media wish for the president to fail? Why are they so critical of him?"

When Trump declared war on the media and called them very early on “an enemy of the American people” and “fake news,” that was sort of a clue.

In other words, the mainstream media have been in Trump’s sites to be targeted and blamed in the first place, so they never had a chance in his book unless they swallowed at face value everything Trump and his people threw their way, contradictory though they be. That is what Fox does.

Trump believes that simply saying certain things and doing certain things will result in what he wants being done – but it’s not so simple. This is irrespective of any mental imbalance he might, and probably does, have.

I am going to talk about this as if he is completely in charge of his senses. I know that there are lots of reasons to think he is suffering from early dementia and various personality disorders, but what is more to the point, Trump is not alone in confounding saying and doing, and over-simplifying the reaction to that. And I am not just talking about his followers.

He believes, for example, that by declaring that “disrespect” for the flag, opposition to white supremacy, and hostility towards (or just suspicion of) law enforcement can be ended by fiat: such as during a pep rally when he speaks to loyalists, when he tweets it out, or when he signs an Executive Order.

For eight months, Trump has been president. The longer he stays in office, the more he says what he really believes, the more people he alienates. It isn’t just when he shoots his mouth off; it’s also what he does.

Now he has pissed off not just NBA and NFL players and fans – even a MLB player - he has annoyed one of the most conservative groups in society: NFL owners! How clumsy do you have to be that in one speech, to alienate NFL owners? Said Trump on Friday in Alabama at a speech:

"Wouldn’t you love to see one of the NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say 'Get that son of a b---- off the field right now? He’s fired! Fired!’”

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sat, 17 Mar 2018 17:30:42 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-tweets-against-athletes-it-backfires.htmlTrump and Pence: What Is and Isn’thttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-and-pence-what-is-and-isn-t.html
Trump and Pence: What Is and Isn’t

By Dennis Loo (9/14/17)

In a talk delivered to a Party working group in summer of 2017, entitled The Problem, the Solution, and the Challenges Before Us, was published online as of August 31, 2017. I am glad that in that speech Bob Avakian expands on the relationship he sees between the NO! campaign and socialist revolution. I previously did not see how he was making that connection based on the other two pieces by him that revcom.us has been recommending. You can see my earlier commentary on those here.

I cite extensively from Avakian’s new words and others, with my remarks interspersed, because you need to see the evidence yourself. This is a rather long article, but as you get into this, you will probably see why.

Let me say at the outset: I still don’t see how Avakian gets from the NO! campaign to its contributing to revolution in this new speech, except insofar as more people will be gathered together to oppose the Trump/Pence regime in November, 2017, (a date they are now aiming for) and so in the general sense that is a good thing and perhaps contributes in a way to that aim. But it is based on a wrong premise and true scientists (of society) do not want that.

Avakian’s mode of argumentation in regard to the NO! campaign is flawed. It is not with pleasure that I say that because I think that if there’s to be revolution in this country, the RCP is the only presently organized force working towards that. The stakes here are exceedingly high. Even for those who do not yet think a socialist revolution is called for or possible, at least growing numbers of people realize that capitalism and imperialism pose an extremely serious danger to this planet (consider the hurricanes and extreme weather patterns that accompany global warming!) and something dramatic and radical must be done.

The reader will make up their own mind and hopefully my interpretation will do some good. Even if you disagree with me thoroughly, the effort reading this will be well worth your time.

I spoke with a friend about my last two articles here and we discovered that going through some of these matters in a Q & A manner broke down some relatively unfamiliar matters, making them much easier to cope with. I’m going to do that now.

Q: What is fascism?

A: You will find a number of different interpretations out there about how to define fascism. This is no agreement between commentators on its occurrence nor conceptual agreement on what is and isn’t fascism. For such a slippery variable to then be applied “scientifically” is difficult. It would appear, nevertheless, that the following traits tend to be present: bourgeois rule but with an extreme variant of bigotry, xenophobia, patriarchy, militarism, a strong man as the leader, fear of “The Other,” worship of the corporate state to the point where corporate power completely eclipses any citizen rights (the latter with no rights), public gender roles being very polarized with no variant in between, women as breeders, contempt towards the “weak,” “fragile,” and any nuance.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 08 Oct 2017 16:31:08 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/q-a-re-fascism.htmlThe Difference Between a System in Crisis and the People in Crisishttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-difference-between-a-system-in-crisis-and-the-people-in-crisis.html
The Difference Between a System in Crisis and the People in Crisis

By Dennis Loo (8/26/17)

It might be useful for me to further elaborate on two of the points I made in the last paragraph of my “An Open Letter to the NO! Campaign.” These two points concern the difference between a system being in political crisis, which this one surely is, and the people being in crisis.

The two processes obviously overlap; some aspects of what is going on is certainly increased people’s suffering.

But there is a significant difference between these two. If you fail to see that difference and select as your focus the secondary aspect (people and the planet are suffering) of a process rather than the primary aspect (there is a political crisis gripping the system due primarily to a credibility problem), than you are making a consequential error.

Contradictions are often like that: complicated and of varying degrees in them, where there is some (or a lot) of different strands. But if you are to extract from that bunch what is primary in them, then you can make sense of it as a whole and effect the overall process thereby. You can have, in other words, a transformative effect and bring into being something hidden to most eyes previously.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 28 Sep 2017 03:32:04 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-difference-between-a-system-in-crisis-and-the-people-in-crisis.htmlAn Open Letter to the NO! Campaignhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/an-open-letter-to-the-no-campaign.html
An Open Letter to the NO! Campaign

By Dennis Loo (8/19/17)

I am reluctant to criticize my friends at the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP, USA) but I do so in the hope that they will correct a mistaken campaign.

They are, after all, the best hope overall – the only hope for an organized force in this country - to lead a movement to overthrow this despicable government and the necessary steps that must be taken, now and after. And when I speak of the government I mean not only Trump, but his vice-president Pence, and this government as a whole based on its plundering the planet and exploiting people, here and abroad. The RCP is the only organized force that I know of even entertaining, and working for, the people to take the stage of history. Everybody else seems committed to some version of riding the bourgeoisie’s coattails, where the people’s role is at most as spectators, not as participants, genuinely engaged.

Thus, I make these and similar remarks not without a lot of consideration since I have learned so much from the RCP over the years, have worked with many of them through decades in various roles, including most recently as a World Can’t Wait’s Steering Committee member, have great respect for what they do, the sacrifices they always make to do what they do, and have become what I am in no small degree because of Bob Avakian’s works in particular.

It is not easy to do what they do. To declare openly that you are a revolutionary communist alone is hard and most groups don’t even dare to do that, let alone all that entails in living up to that! It’s in the spirit of agreement that I raise this criticism.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sat, 09 Sep 2017 21:15:51 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/an-open-letter-to-the-no-campaign.htmlNo One to Blame But Himselfhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/no-one-but-himself-to-blame.html
No One to Blame But Himself

By Dennis Loo (7/30/17)

Trump keeps firing people, headed by White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus, forced out Sean Spicer, throws an ongoing fit about loyalist Jeff Sessions (who was Trump's other cred with the Establishment besides Preibus), previously fired Sally Yates, Preet Bharara, James Comey, and a bunch of lesser known figures who were Preibus allies, and so far failed to fill a record number of junior and senior ranks of appointees. Who takes Spicer's place? Overall in charge is a foul-mouthed hedge fund manager nicknamed "The Mooch."

But the one individual most responsible for them doing what they were doing, even those such as Jared (who testified behind closed doors), Donald Jr., and Spicer, whose one unforgivable sin was being made fun of by a woman on SNL, was to do their best to mimic and follow his lead, is Donald Sr., who wavers, says self-contradictory things always, has no filter. and even interrupts himself. That's who needs to be fired because he's the leader and sets the tone of this Brat Pack. He is loyal back to no one when it comes down to either him or anyone else. That is why he keeps on trying to figure out whether or not he personally is being investigated. The answer is of course you are Donald, everyone else was either following your lead (e.g., Russia) or too principled to do your bidding. Look how AG Jeff Sessions did and does, a Trump loyalist through and through, and Rod Rosenstein, who go from friends when Trump needs to get rid of Comey, to foe, when they are standing in the way of firing Mueller. How could Sessions tell Trump ahead of time that he would be eventually forced to recuse himself on Russia when at the time Sessions, Kushner, Donald Jr., Flynn, and others, including Trump himself, had all been hiding from public view their extensive contacts with Russia and Putin, before, during and after the election?

When you irritate to the point that they feel the need to issue public apologies for your speeches, the Boy Scouts of America and the police, who by god will he piss off next? What's left? Oh, I almost forgot: even the military and ICE and its head Sessions are at least divided about you.

We know that Trump has a very thin skin and that he is a misogynist. What SNL should do is select a female to play Trump and SNL may play a role in unseating Trump. The man can't stand to be mocked by a woman.

The immigration issue and civil wars breaking out over scarce resources due to rising seas, innudating island nations and flooding lower lying areas such as Florida, Manhattan's subways, or many of our seaports, unusuable because they are already or will be underwater, and to parched areas, that were previously productive, due to global warming, was identified by the DoD itself as a paramount issue, dwarfing the current terrorism security issue.

But the current US POTUS blissfully denies that global warming even exists and the Democrats, while conceding that global warming is real, do far too little given the situation's practically unspeakable gravity.

In Part 1 of this series I began discussing immigration and focused on Thomas Edsall's view. That ends with him, correctly I think, forseeing the decline of the parties and Right and Left as we know them, and offering up as a possible strategy, incorrectly I will argue, for the Left of stressing instead of diversity, what keeps us together as a nation. As part of that strategy, he proposes tightening up borders and paths to legal citizenship, an issue that has emerged as a central and volatile one in much of the First World.

There are several problems with Edsall's analysis and advocacy here.

First, it must be said as a matter of principle, that national borders are artificial and in some cases, highly arbitrary, linked to the rise of capitalism. No one is an illegal. We are all human beings.

Second, as I briefly alluded to last time, global warming is behind much of the emigration (Syria being one notable example) and as such, refugees are fleeing a problem - global warming - created by the First World in the first place, so complaining about a consequence of a problem you created in the first place and are chiefly contributing to is bad form.

Third, Edsall, as useful as his work in general is, and I learn a great deal reading his very studied columns, nevertheless, his frame of reference is too small. He is trying to adopt a program for the "Left" by which he means something like the Democratic Liberal Left, rather than the genuine Left (outside of the major parties), adopting as a platform a more closed door to immigration than opening up the doors.

While I am not advocating the total abolition of all borders immediately, the Left (in whatever incarnation) adopting what amounts to fear-based policies adopted by neoliberalism and the deindustrialization where manufacturing jobs are largely being exported to the Third World, thus leaving behind a lot of the traditional working class in the First World, is a bad idea. Edsall and Beinart are trying to graft a Right strategy onto a Left strategy and it won't work. Obama schtick of "hope" and "change" was wearing thin. What hope and what change that actually meant something?

Edsall has his finger on a real dilemma, however, because the First World working class is aroused about this issue and an answer to it has to be given.

Although he has the lowest rating of any POTUS in seventy years (and the lowest rated POTUS ever in the first six months of office), Trump annoyingly still hangs onto the support of most of his loyal base, seemingly unable to do anything that will jar many of them loose. Even if Donald was to publicly rape and whip Melania, a lot of his supporters would probably cheer. It apparently does not matter to them that the GOP health bill, if it ever passes, will knock 22-23 million people off the rolls, most of them Trump fans, according to the non-partisan CBO. Many of them pay scant attention to the news, a fact which many of them are proud of. And they mostly show little ability to reason anyway, they being attracted most of all to a strong man who says he will fix it all.

Let me give you a thought, that I plan further elaborating upon later. It is this: even though if he has not an ounce of care for anybody but himself, and his most loyal fans clearly don't know how to think - nearly all their reasons why they see him as they do, seem idiosyncratic and irrelevant rationales, dismal reading fare, with the one thread that they mostly have in common is conforming to authority and that Trump says out loud what they are thinking, but have too much sense themselves normally to say. He is emotionally one of theirs.

Trump and his closest advisers are so dumb that they will have to be escorted out of the White House by guards because they won't get it that they've been ousted, even when it's official. "Wait," you can almost hear Trump say, "I was elected. Did you see the big crowds at my inauguration?"

The jig is already up, only they don't realize it yet.

Let me use an analogy:

Monty Python's black knight encounters King Arthur of Camelot and won't let him by. The king is forced to fight the black knight, cutting off each of his arms, first the left, then the right, and then both legs in succession, but the black knight keeps on fighting despite this, calling them all flesh wounds, even though he has lost his limbs and is spurting blood all over the place. The black knight is Trump.

If it's possible, Donald Jr. is even dumber than his dad. Except that I didn't think it's possible to be stupider than Donald Sr.

The anti-intellectual streak in American culture, where Donald Jr. gets a softball interview with Sean Hannity, and still admits that he may have met with other Russians (!) is like a serial murderer planting a big sign in his backyard saying "DON'T LOOK HERE FOR DEAD BODIES!" It's like Donald Sr. saying to Netanyahu when visiting the Israelis - before the cameras - that he didn't tell the Russians it was the Israelis that gave him the information about laptops on airplanes. Wait, he did that!

None of the rules such as ethics rules or the emoluments clause or the separation of powers rule or not picking fights with the mother of a slain soldier all assume that when you get caught red-handed that you have enough sense to own up to it, and not act as if facts don't matter. This Trump crowd is another thing altogether. Anti-intellectualism has met its nadir in Trump.

This is akin to Trump's statements during the campaign that beginning with his first day as POTUS, conflict between black and brown people and the cops WILL END (because the police will get their way totally) and he has a secret plan (which is still to be revealed) to get rid of ISIS. As if things are so simple, and resistance did not exist. Apparently, in Trumpville, resistance is a foreign concept, not the way of the world.

NBC is now reporting that there was another Russian, a person suspected of and probably involved in counter-intelligence, at this "fruitless" meeting with Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort.

So, according to POTUS, most people would consort with and buddy up with adversary nations against domestic opponents. Sure, Donald.

We await the next shocking revelation that will top what has already been revealed. We won't wait long. Pure shame won't drive these people from office. The GOP has already proved itself a "nothing burger." First, they were saying no evidence has been revealed and now that indisputable evidence is provided, they say it does not matter. The actions of the people must be brought to bear.

Despite all his best efforts to call it "fake news" and the Democrats' revenge for a lost election, the following items were confirmed by both sides in terms of occurring (not necessarily what they mean):

1) Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort agreed, and Donald Jr., at least, was eager to meet, with someone he thought was a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin with dirt on Hillary Clinton's campaign. The fact that the Russian lawyer didn't after all have the promised dirt doesn't matter (if it's true) as a legal matter. You are breaking the law to solicit help from a foreign nation on your domestic opponent, regardless of whether your source provides an iota of evidence.

2) Jared Kushner approached Russian Ambassador Kislyak with the idea of setting up a secret channel of communications with the Russians and the Trump campaign. This was to be kept secret not from the Russians, who of course knew everything, but from western intelligence and the public. This was such a bizarre and naive idea that Kislyak didn't know what to make of it.

3) Paul Manafort was forced to resign as the second Trump campaign chair because of his ties to and huge payoffs from Ukraine.

People are a lot smarter than they’re allowed to be. If we want a better world we need to give them the chance to become sophisticated thinkers, not only our students but people of all ages. You cannot raise and train rigorous thinkers in a hot house. They have to be immersed in the rough and tumble of real contradictions and clashes between varying perspectives. Truth, as we say here, emerges through contention. I’m going to close with this excerpt from a major white paper that I initiated and wrote with a terrific team of California university faculty in 2011 entitled “Cooking the Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs: California’s Public Higher Education System in Peril.” The American Association of University Professionals (AAUP)’s Journal of Academic Freedom published it in 2012.

Life does not come with an answer key. The correct and best answers to all questions are not always definitively known in life at any given point before the fact, and incomplete and indirect information is the norm rather than the exception. Primarily due to the influence of the privateers, the educational system is increasingly becoming one in which the main emphasis is memorization and giving back to the teacher what the teacher has dispensed as the answers in order to pass the tests. Students are not being properly and adequately taught how to analyze, weigh information, think holistically, decide between competing claims, and make wise choices based on frequently incomplete information. This grows all the more significant when there is a growing storm of false or misleading information emanating from people and organizations trying to seduce people into buying their wares, whether those wares are commodities or ideas. Should this trend persist it will mean that our society will become increasingly intellectually impoverished, because its citizenry has become vulnerable to being manipulated by hucksters, opportunists, and those who have more ready access to mass media by virtue of their owning media, possessing a lot of money, and/or having friends in high places.

The good news is that something can be done about this with students, since you have them for a while and they receive some training in my classes and some in their other classes on how to pick apart what you are exposed to. Even if you are told something untrue or mostly untrue, you have the means by which you can infer the truth, or at least, a part or even a lot of the truth. You can, in other words, be given malarkey and you can make marmalade with it. The saying that computer experts have of GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out - thus doesn't necessarily apply to humans. It is nevertheless true that part of people's training to do the preceding, however, does require exposing people to a whole lot that is true, so that they realize that a) lots of what they thought before was true, isn't, b) lots of what they learn instead is true, albeit often shocking, and c) that the ways they were thinking before needs to be subject to scrutiny and a good deal of it rejected, or else what they learn from you remains a few inconvenient facts, but they remain convinced that nothing can be done about anything anyway.

Let me illustrate that last point: if you have been taught repeatedy that it is "human nature" to be greedy, self-centered, and that material incentives (or disincentives) invariably are what is exclusively or primarily true, and you believe it, then you may learn some discrete factoids along the way, and you will treat those facts as maybe even true, but your conviction of what "human nature" is remains unshaken because you have heard it as a truism so many times, from so many sources, that anyone challenging your view is surpassingly odd and out-of-touch with the real world. After all, perhaps you're thinking, how can something I have taken for granted for so long and repeated by everyone I know not be true? It is furthermore the dominant ideology preached by POTUS on down as the truth. Most of my teachers even preach it, so it must be true, right?

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 12 Jul 2017 22:40:42 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/credulousness-as-a-problem.htmlIf the Democrats Called People to Take the Streetshttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/if-the-democrats-called-people-to-take-the-streets.html
If the Democrats Called People to Take the Streets

By Dennis Loo (7/3/17)

Back in 1973 in Chile in the weeks before the fascist Pinochet coup (backed by the US government), everyone could see the coup coming. President Salvador Allende's followers begged and pleaded with him to arm the people to defend against a coup everyone saw was coming. But Allende kept saying that the Chilean military was patriotic and would not participate in the coup and refused to arm the people. Thousands died in the first few days of the coup, including Dr. Salvador Allende. Fascist Pinochet Chile was the place that neoliberal policies - the Chicago Boys led by Milton Friedman - was first implemented. It was a harbinger of what was to come with Thatcher and Reagan, followed by the rest.

So now our POTUS didn't take power through a coup but through an election, the groundwork laid for him by Obama himself. Obama never meant what he said about "hope" and "change," after all, the Democrats like Nancy Pelosi had the majority since the 2006 elections, and then the White House in 2008. A majority or near majority wanted Bush and Cheney impeached, but before even the 2006 midterms, Pelosi ruled impeachment "off the table." Obama had a mandate but instead of doing what so many hoped he would do, he "reached across the aisle" to the discredited and fascist GOP and tried to work with them. He bailed out Wall Street instead of helping mortgagees, standing between those damn bankers and the people. What did he say to the bankers who were ready to cave?

"My administration," the president [Obama] added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 09 Jul 2017 20:14:12 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/if-the-democrats-called-people-to-take-the-streets.htmlTrump, Pence: How to Best Take Them On - Part 5http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-pence-how-to-best-take-them-on-part-5.html
Trump, Pence: How to Best Take Them On - Part 5

By Dennis Loo (6/30/17)

In no particular order, these are some of the pitfalls that we can avoid:

Setting an Example

When we make mistakes: we correct them and make a sincere public apology. Not everyone will do this, but we need to set an example. At times everyone errs. Many of us are smart enough to realize that we aren't the best at everything, and we can learn from others and from the experience. In fact, humility is a hallmark of being smart, whereas arrogance - e.g., repeating many times that we are the very best in the world at ... - is a sure sign that we aren't smart enough to realize our own human limitations. The smarter you are, in fact, the more humble you are, because you realize that there is so much more to find out.

When I was eighteen or so, I thought that I knew a lot more than I knew at the time.

To paraphrase Hemingway here: if you're 18 and think you know more than you do, then you haven't yet lived enough. If you're forty and still think you know everything you need to, then you've got no head.

Setting an example is especially needed when POTUS is a thug, a hothead, a madman, and wants journalists beaten up or worse.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sat, 08 Jul 2017 20:01:05 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-pence-how-to-best-take-them-on-part-5.htmlTrump, Pence: How to Best Take Them On - Part 4http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-pence-how-to-best-take-them-on-part-4.html
Trump, Pence: How to Best Take Them On - Part 4

By Dennis Loo (6/29/17)

As I wrote last time, there are three basic truths that apply here, if you want to actually do something, and not just vent.

Not that venting is wrong necessarily, but it will only get your frustrations out, and we want to win.

Not win in the way that Trump means it, but actually triumph. If that is what you want to do, then listen up:

Like anything else worth doing - such as winning an NBA championship, winning a Grand Slam in tennis, or ending up defeating your rivals in debate, or any other arena, at any level, you have to make sacrifices and you have to want to win more than your rivals. Hasn't this always been true - that those things worth doing, require sacrifices and tremendous effort? What is easy and requires little to no risk is correspondingly not worth much.

You won't hear any of this from Congress, or mainstream media, or right-wing media, still less the White House: the insurance companies (HMOs) don't do anything except act as middle-men and are not needed. They only siphon off profits for themselves, like giant ticks. Health care should cost, and would cost, far less and for everyone, sick or healthy. Obamacare (the ACA) was originally a Heritage Foundation idea that Gov. Mitt Romney adopted for Massachusetts and then in order to become a "viable" (read: expensive) presidential candidates, Obama and Hillary made a pact with the HMOs not to offer a single-payer or a government option.

The Republicans are in a fix because they have been promising a better plan than Obamacare for years, but they can't deliver on their twin goals: enriching their friends in the insurance industry further but keeping enough healthy people in to make any insurance plan cost-effective. They just can't do it. The point I started from bears repeating: what we hear and what we don't hear from authorities is key to their decrepit system surviving. It is a form of governance and a mode of exercising power. It is nothing less. And the only way to break through that is for enough people making what isn't doscussed by authorities part of the whole discourse. You always start a social movement with small numbers and you have to be willing to start with those smaller forces with an aim in your strategy to grow larger. It is hard, but the only realistic alternative.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 29 Jun 2017 21:01:01 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/easy-fix-for-health-care.htmlTrump, Pence: How to Best Take Them On Part 3http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-pence-how-to-best-take-them-on-part-3.html
Trump, Pence: How to Best Take Them On - Part 3

There are, of course, many different dimensions to the question of how best to deal with this Trump-Pence regime. On the one hand, it can quickly become a very complicated issue, as anyone alive and at least semi-aware knows. On the other hand, there are certain simple truths that you have to get right or you will immediately, or soon thereafter, go astray.

Let's begin with the simple truths and then move from there.

The first simple fact: more of the same or similar won't do. We got here through those means and if this result is unacceptable to you, then you have to take a different path. As Sherlock Holmes said in The Sign of the Four story: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

We are dealing with a system and therefore our aim is to change the governing system logic with a different system. While Trump is hardly normal, in fact, highly abnormal, even his closest associates are running in circles trying to please their mercurial and agitated boss, and Trump though he doesn't like it, needs other people to do anything. As peculiar and out-from-right-field as Trump is, the issue is not mainly him. The problem we face is not "human nature" as people usually mistakenly mean that - greedy, selfish, narrow-minded - but the logic of capital and the pursuit of more capital. Even Trump obeys that law. As would anyone else, including Bernie Sanders. The existing system isn't going to offer you within its existing legal channels the means to undo that very system. It would be crazy to do that and there is a reason why no system ever has done so. If you think that voting for a new system is on the ballot, then you have another think coming. You have to go outside the normal channels. That is what the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement and the women's movement all learned and showed. That is what history can teach us, if you pay attention to that cumulative and world-historic experience, which leads us to the second simple truth.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 29 Jun 2017 21:12:56 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-pence-how-to-best-take-them-on-part-3.htmlTrump and Pence: How Best to Take Them On? Part 2http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-and-pence-how-best-to-take-them-on-part-2.html
Trump and Pence: How Best to Take Them On? Part 2

For example, Revolution quotes Andy Zee, who is the main spokesman for this anti-fascist movement saying,

All the more so because this regime is hell-bent on imposing fascism: with all the arrogance and ignorance, the Bible taken literally and the flag, the racist genocide and misogyny that is the true face of Make America Great Again. Yes, there are differences from German fascism in the 1930s, but two important points: one, there are striking parallels to the rise of fascism in the ’30s. And, second, and at the heart of the matter, the essential character of fascism is present: a qualitative change in how society is governed—through essentially open terror and the elimination of basic democratic rights. Only in the U.S. today, Donald Trump has nuclear weapons and the most powerful military in world history under his command.

Yes, the Trump regime is hell-bent on remaking the norms along fascist rather than bourgeois-democratic lines, where for example, due process for the accused is suspended permanently and the presumption is no longer innocent until proven guilty, but once accused, you are assumed to be guilty. The many Trump executive orders include such as at least implicit language within them. But note that Trump is getting a lot of resistance to his and Pence's efforts. Note that their intent and what they have been saying and all of their bluster is different from what they do. Rather than viewing this as a well-thought out strategy, consider how precious little Trump thinks ahead about anything. Look at when they tried to implement the travel ban at airports, how push back happened immediately from protestors and even judges. Trump can point to no legislation except the terrible (and likely unpassable through the Senate) GOP "health care" bill finally passed in the House but which even the GOP can barely muster comments, let alone enthusiasm for.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 23 Jun 2017 04:04:39 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-and-pence-how-best-to-take-them-on-part-2.htmlTrump, Pence: How to Best Take Them Onhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Trump-and-Pence-Articles/united-front-against-fascism.html
Trump and Pence: How Best to Take Them On?

By Dennis Loo (6/21/17)

As I wrote two days ago about his support starting finally to erode significantly: "Trump supporters thought Trump was at least a bully for them. What they are beginning to see he's just a bully, period."

"Sometimes you need a bully to deal with another bully," as one Trump voter stated before the election. "He might kill us all, but I am voting for him," another said.

In other words, not all Trump voters were completely oblivious to Trump's flaws before they voted for him. Given a choice between Hillary (which 40% of Trump voters hated with a passion) and an "outsider" like Trump, given how badly neoliberal policies have been to most of us, given that especially Trump voters are less likely to do anything political but vote, and given the DNC and Hillary's inability to understand the 99%'s plight, Trump's election, while tough to swallow, makes some sense.

Newsweek's 6/16/17 reports on polls, showing that the snowball against Trump has finally begun its inevitable picking up in his base. The article states:

In just one month, the percentage of Republicans who thought America was heading in the right direction dropped a full 17 percentage points—from 58 percent in May to 41 percent in June—according to a Gallup survey released this week. Overall, just 24 percent of Americans are pleased with the direction the country is heading

The Quinnipiac University survey found that just 36 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing, while 58 percent disapprove. That's a "near-record" negative rating and a drop from last month, the poll noted. In its April 19 poll, Quinnipiac University found Trump's approval rating stood at 40 percent with 56 percent disapproving.

Trump would want to get to the bottom of Russia and his administration's investigation, if he weren't so heavily personally involved. He would be upset, not solicitous, at a good and loyal friend like Mike Flynn misleading him and VP Pence. He wouldn't have been trying to get Flynn off and telling Comey, NIA Director Coats, and NSA head Rogers to lay off. He would have cut off his ties with Flynn, not trying to rescue him. This would be a case of putting the country's interests above his own sense of loyalty, hard as it is for someone like Trump to do, but what you expect from a POTUS.

Instead of wanting to get to the bottom of it and protecting the US from Putin, and how extensively Russia has actually penetrated, the degree of which no one knows except Putin, Trump calls it a "witch hunt" and fires those who dare to look into it. The very fact that he poo poos the very idea and wants it called off completely tells you what you what you should know. If Trump weren't so fake tanned orange, his embarrassment would show more clearly. Alan Dershowitz thinks POTUS has a perfect right to fire these people. I suppose he will be defending it too when Trump fires Mueller. But then, if he does that, then all hell will break loose for Trump. Little suspect, his little mind, that foresees no consequences, and is usually surprised at the blowback.

Do you think all those who voted for you are that stupid? Some of them - 40% - didn't like Hillary more than you. Maybe the rule of law isn't uppermost in their minds, but obstruction of justice and especially when the inevitable tales of business involvement start to roll out, there won't be anywhere the clown and his fellow clowns can hide.

First, the bad news: media and ideological segregation have never been more pronounced with what we see as ads and what we're supposedly interested in popping up on the web without our involvement or permission. Never has it been so easy to avoid that which you don't already agree with and encounter only that which the vast majority around you steadfastly agree with. You can hear only that which you already believe. You have to go out of your way to hear anything different a lot or even know that something else even exists. While this balkinization of reality applies most strongly to the Right since gullibity and insularity is central to their mission, there are some on the Left who argue fociferously that certain words and phrases are by themselves wrong and that the very act of hearing what you don't agree with should best be avoided. Fortunately, there are some programs (e.g., Media Matters) that give you unvarnished versions of the Right because they genuinely feel that you should know what those you don't necessarily agree with are saying.

Trump voters, while eroding somewhat (how could they not?) due to numerous, almost uncountable scandals, the like of which we have never seen in any generation, remain mostly loyal to him so far basically because they are credulous and because they take their pointers from the right-wing echo chamber. Trump got elected this same way. Such a stupendously incompetant, fascist, treasonous ignoramus could never have gotten the nomination, let alone be elected, albeit with three million votes less than Hillary and because Hillary and her people didn't take Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania seriously or correctly. She was too busy raising more money to pay attention and is a core part of why the DNC deserted the white and ethnic working class when Obama took Goldman Sachs et al's side against the people during his $13 Trillion bail-out. Moreover, even though Trump is discrediting right-wing policies by his awful behavior, the Right will remain a force for the foreseeable future, no doubt continuing their characterization beyond the eventual Trump and Pence resignations as unjustified actions by the so-called "deep state," feuling resentment and stoking violence, even more than they are now doing.

Second, the good news: the majority of people and the truth are against Trump and his camp. What scenario did you or do you envision, where the two forces, especially truth and facts are so one-sided, so clear and so vital? Remember that Limbaugh and the Right started complaining about "fake news" when Limbaugh saw that the middle and the Left were about to charge the Right for exactly that, trading in fake news? Anyone with any concern about facts is appalled at the Right's tenuous relationship with it, like the ex-wives of Trump and Gingrich.

How far will the Right get with their insistence that the Trump camp's ties to Russia, extensive and years in the making, is a "witch hunt" and "fake news?"

Nearly everyday, and some days there is more than one story a day, brings fresh revelations that spark disbelief, shock, and umbrage from most of the world about Trump's antediluvian attitudes and the wrecking ball he's using on the world.

He's stupifyingly worse than anyone foresaw. Several sequences of his events lead you to not believe anyone could be that stupid and that reckless, but yet there it is: he did tweet that, he did say that, and he did that ... that unbelievable thing.

Not even a normal young child would do some things he has done. He picks fights with people he shouldn't and then when he's told (I would assume someone tells him no he shouldn't sometimes) he shouldn't, he doubles and triples down. He says things that contradict his own message and his own interests if he thinks it benefits his fragile ego.

Feuding with London's Mayor at this time no one would do, it's unthinkable, but Trump is doing it. His cabinet and Ivanka should resign immediately to show this is utterly unacceptable behavior. But then they defend their boss as best they can, no matter what kind of pretzel they must stretch themselves into to do so. That makes them accomplices. Several others, however, such as the number two person at the US Chinese embassy, are resigning in protest, and his administration is having a hard time recruiting people. Who wants to join a sinking ship after all?

Whether this is due in part to some brain malfunction of Trump's, such as small strokes, we may never know, but what IS clear is that he is still here in office and doing unheard of damage right and left, in so short a period. While some within his party verbally complain, they are nevertheless letting him stay: in the most powerful office in the world, spewing out his nonsense words, picking arguments by his almost daily diatribes, and making awful decisions. How can this be? With him remaining with his finger on the nuclear trigger, he could very well get pissed off enough to end the world.

The question is not Trump himself, since his sins and ignorance were all there for all to see for a long time.

This is a slightly edited version of something Dennis Loo shared with a class recently.

Every day we make decisions. You cannot be alive and not do it all the time.

This is not mainly due to our current POTUS's stance, although his decisions especially affect us all. This is a commentary on that process.

To accomplish seeing the architecture of decision-making is different from what mostly youhave been taught, where you are often presented with is a set of conclusions and you are expected to memorize and/or accept those conclusions.

Let’s begin by defining what our terms mean here. By methodology I mean the method(s) we employ to arrive at certain conclusions.

By calling your attention to this I am trying to get you to see beneath the surface of things and see the inner workings (like Superman’s X-Ray vision) of things. To accomplish seeing the architecture of decision-making is different from what mostly have been taught, where you are often presented with is a set of conclusions and you are expected to memorize and/or accept those conclusions.

Aka Appeal to Authority: “you should accept this because I or another authority tells you so.” A variant of this perspective is where Republicans consider other Republicans leaders more credible than others (such as Democrats or liberals) and Democrats correspondingly are more likely to buy or accept the thoughts and behavior of Democratic leaders. In other words, the public as a whole is not really examining whether a conclusion is a) sound in its premise, b) the chain of reasoning, and c) the rigor of the evidence, but instead accepting what they’ve been told by what their favorite authority tells them to think. As you can see, if “your truth” is their “truth” then whether you are consciously aware of it or not, you have accepted tacitly the main authorities defining what is acceptable to think about and what is not. You have accepted their terms to start with.

There are times that this public tendency is broken, such as during the 60s when there was a “credibility gap.” This “credibility gap” was widely observed and even got its name from the phenomenon that when the government spokesman or the POTUS would say something, most of the people would not believe their government was being truthful with them. The “credibility gap” also opened up because anti-war activists told a very different story that many people eventually came to accept. As Henry Kissinger writes in his memoirs, a relatively small group of activists exerted a disproportionate influence, far greater than their actual numbers.

Aka an Ad Hominem argument: “I either trust or distrust the source and judge whether or not I accept someone else’s word based on who they are rather than what they are saying.”

One left-wing version of the latter is when someone says that white people can’t know and should not ever talk about matters such as discrimination because they can’t know what minorities go through. While that may be so in some or even many cases, it is not and should not be viewed as a rule.

That is because truth is truth, no matter who is saying it and no matter what their motive might be. I want for you to base yourself in the bedrock of what IS true, whether it is popular or not. That is the standard we need to set and popularize more rather than truth handed down by authority or who we find more credible.

It is often – but not always – the case that the methods one chooses to investigate something already contains within it the conclusion or the nature of the conclusion.

If you choose per capita income as your criterion for national wealth that is different than selecting the Gini Index (a measure of the amount of income inequality) and you will end up with a different picture. Both are hard numbers and both are valid measures, but just because something is a hard number also means that interpretation and choice are always involved before the numbers are selected. Do not make the mistake, as often is the case, of mistaking a hard number for the “objectivity” or precision of interpretation involved before the numbers are compiled. Numbers are real and should be taken seriously, but you never escape from interpretation, both of what those numbers mean and how they were chosen in the first place. Just because a set of numbers are real (assuming they are valid measures) does not necessarily mean those numbers are more precise and mean what you think they mean.

For instance, student evaluations of faculty (SEFs) are converted to numbers and half of the faculty are below (or at) the mean and half above (or at). Many faculty and administrators treat these numbers as a stand-in for teaching efficacy. One faculty member in the Faculty Senate seriously proposed – I am told - that we fire everybody who was below the department’s mean. But the mean (average) by definition means that half of the department must fall at and below that average, cumulative score. If you fired everyone below that mean what would be the result? Would teaching improve? The remaining people will have to then be half at our below the new mean. Do you then fire those people? What disparate factors go into one’s numbers and how which motives are involved when different students fill out those SEFs?

For example, if one frames the issue as saying that it’s a War on Terror then you already have decided that your answer to this problem is certain things and not other things. The War on Terror accepted as THE interpretive frame means that you have already ruled off the table acts such as state terror as okay and not a form of terror. Why is that? Because the assumption of the WOT formulation is that state violence does not count in that WOT, that only anti-state terrorism counts as terror and that any and all things done by my government to stem anti-state terror are okay and acceptable, including torture and killing innocent non-combatants and alleged terrorists.

If you say the problem of poverty is that those who are impoverished are to blame for their own conditions, then you have already ruled out measures such as rooting out structural reasons why some must be poor under this system, for this system to operate.

In your comments on the readings I would like to see more focus on the process by which certain conclusions are arrived at, and your retracing the key steps in that process. For example, Alexander does not confine her book to just saying “the system is racist” but uses example after example of why she came to that conclusion. You will note that in the book’s first few pages she says that she went from thinking that the problem was continuing the gains secured by the Civil Rights Movement to later recognizing an entirely different paradigm in which anti-black procedures were being used to turn the CJS situation into a new Jim Crow. Many of the same facts she saw still but it was now adding up with this new paradigm to a very different conclusion.

You want to be aware that the values imbedded in the different readings for this course, especially mine, are radically different to what you are used to and that you don’t want to judge those conclusions based on a wholly taken-for-granted set of customary values. What you are striving for is this: that you can faithfully and accurately restate someone’s argument without necessarily agreeing with it in whole or in part or any of it at all. To do this successfully, you have to suspend any judgment of that argument. You don’t have to suspend judgment indefinitely, but you need to accurately convey someone else’s views first before anything else is done. In order to do this properly, you need to figure out what this person’s value system is, upon which her or his argument rests. Usually a person does not speak explicitly of their true values (this mostly operates unconsciously) and so you have to work this out yourself and make those values explicit.

For example, if we were to talk about Hassine’s value system, what could we say? We might say that he thinks it better for people to cooperate, than individualism that eschews the common good. That persecution should not be occurring against prisoners. That his training beforehand allowed him to be more articulate than the average prisoner. And so on.

If we spoke of Alexander we could say that she is an advocate of a social movement and not just some legal action being necessary for what needs to be done, most Americans are misinformed of what is being done in their name, and so on.

If we spoke of where Loo is coming from, you might say that he sees cooperation in groups like society itself is overall more important than competition (the two both exist but with one usually primary), that he sees system logic as more important than the individuals within the system overall, that he distinguishes primary from secondary factors, rather than just either/or, and so on.

One of the tensions that you see through out all of this is between social rules (which are usually implicit and are not written down anywhere) which MOST people abide by and whether something is morally fair or right.

Note in this regard the last stage according to Benjamin Bloom that makes up the last page of your syllabus: that in order to carry out EVALUATION requires that you ferret out different, competing paradigms or value systems, as fundamental to doing Evaluation correctly. You remember my saying early on in the course’s first lecture that there are basically two kinds of people in the world depending on what they place foremost, themselves or others? Go back to that if you need to review it.

I am saying that one’s value system is very relevant in what you see as the most important facts, but I am also saying that facts are facts. They are both important but why what one values most of all is in and of itself not subject to proof.

Another way of saying this is that you and someone you know may not agree on certain things because you both see the world differently and value things differently than each other, but that doesn’t mean that facts are just the same as opinions, because they are not. (Something to take into account here is the difference between absolute and relative facts.)

In the ultimate analysis, whether one takes facts seriously, or either distorts or dismisses those facts, does depend in part on what you value most. Another way of saying this is that facts are taken more seriously by those who favor rules as applying to everyone: not a set of rules for some, and a different set for others. Again, note that I said that facts still rule but whether one accepts those facts and which facts are most important in the overall scheme of different facts is dependent on whether you value your self interest most or not.

Let me quote from Globalization and the Demolition of Society regarding this:

Defeating the empire is not something that occurs only on the literal battlefield. It is also something that is determined throughout the continuum of battles over many issues, including: ideas; philosophy; forms of organization and leadership in economy, politics, and other realms; ways of arguing; ways of responding to and respecting empirical data; interest in truth as opposed to expedience; how people and the environment should be treated; the nature of relations among people (e.g., between women and men, different races and ethnicities, rich and poor countries, etc.); ways of responding to criticism and ideas that are not your own; ways of handling one’s own errors and those of others; and more, all the way up through how warfare is carried out. (GDS, Pp. 326-7)

I know that this passage is also in another of your assigned readings. I want to call your attention to a different set of points in it than you may have noticed in the other reading. That is, I am putting forth a standard here where one is consistent as much as possible. One should respect and take seriously empirical data, not just what one may like, and ignoring the rest. One should act with regard to rich and poor countries, different races or ethnicities, different genders and sexual orientations, with equality for all, and not treat them in a divisive hierarchy. One should be open and fully appreciative when we err to have mistakes pointed out to us and we should correct our ways that are found wanting with sincerely voiced self-criticism because pursuing the truth is more important than anything and certainly is more important than ego. One should take the merits of an idea whether they are our idea or someone else’s and it should not matter who or where it comes from. (I plan on explaining that further later). Ideas and philosophy and including methods of warfare et al do matter in this regard and are not irrelevant.

I am not so naïve as to think that this standard is something everyone is equally or even necessarily in agreement on. Most people will have some or even a lot of trouble with this standard as the societal leading norm and there will be and there should be lots of ongoing debate about it, in part and in whole. Despite many people’s first reaction to this paragraph being something like “It will never happen,” isn’t this passage what most people in the world want and can behind as the leading societal standard, not in the sense that most people can right away live up to that standard, or anywhere close. Cutting edge normative standards are by their nature going to be what most people aspire to rather than meet already. We have as the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights, for example, that permits freedom of assembly and speech, even though very many Americans if they had their druthers, would rather not give this right to those they disagree with. If the above-cited paragraph was what we aspire to and held to as a norm, isn’t the

kind of society you would like to see and would come to support? His almost continual

]]> ccplogin@cloudaccess.net (CCP User)Fri, 02 Jun 2017 17:44:28 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/methodology.htmlThe New Cold War Isn’t the Old Cold Warhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-new-cold-war-isn-t-the-old-cold-war.html
The New Cold War Isn’t the Old Cold War

“What we have is a situation in which the strong leader of a relatively weak state is acting in opposition to weak leaders of relatively strong states [the latter being Trump leading the US],” General Sir Richard Shirreff, the former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, said. “And that strong leader is Putin. He is calling the shots at the moment.”

I am using that same quote to introduce you to a novel way to make sense of what is going on.

From the latter 1940s until 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, we had the first Cold War between the US-led camp versus the USSR-China-led camp. This pitted the capitalist camp against the real or pseudo-socialist camp[1] and led to many things, including the John F. Kennedy effort to boost science and education after the USSR launched Sputnik – making them first in outer space - and the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Both decisions were designed to make the US more appealing to Third World and non-aligned nations because socialism gave people for the first time a choice between capitalism and something radically different. JFK's initiative to make Americans smarter has with the socialism's decline and thus capitalism's alternative no longer real, made bright Americans no longer a good thing. Free education (e.g., California's 1960 Master Plan) has given way to educational plans for saddling students with debt as their primary goal, credulity a plus for businesses' sales, hoodwinking people ideologically (right-wing media), and a brain drain out of the US (for example, to India rather than from).

We now have a different situation: the capitalist camp won the Cold War. Billions of people no longer can choose capitalism or socialism but have to accept whatever capitalism offers. A number of consequences flow out of that.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 07 Jun 2017 03:17:17 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-new-cold-war-isn-t-the-old-cold-war.htmlWhat is Next for Trump?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/what-is-next-for-trump.html
What is Next for Trump?

By Dennis Loo (5/20/17)

While no one knows exactly how the next several days and months will be for Trump, there are some things we can determine based on the past. Thirteen Points to consider:

Trump will continue to be his own worst enemy. Forget the press, whether you think that they are part of the problem or not. Even without the media doing its job, which in a "free society" has to include frequently citing anonymous sources' information, some of which are the Trump people themselves: the alternative would be what? A government owned media? You surely wouldn't want that, like Tass in Russia. Trump openly praises authoritarian leaders for a reason: because they are like him. When you say The Pledge of Allegiance you are asserting your support for "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." That isn't what Fox News is training you in, however, and they didn't ever tell you that "liberty and justice for all" must include the presence and tolerating of unpopular views. There must be diversity of all kinds of people and their different thoughts, including (unpaid) protestors and people who may make you uncomfortable. A lively society isn't supposed to be always comfortable, elevating fear and security over justice. Those people, including Hannity and Trump who tell you differently, do so encouraging you to accept their authority, rather than your ability to think and your sense of fair play. They are privately contemptuous of you, otherwise they would treat you, your health care, and taxes, with more respect and urge you to use your head. There is a reason why Trump won't release his taxes and he and his family and friends don't do their fair share. Instead they wrap themselves in the flag, thump their bibles, stoke your fears, and steal from you right and left (e.g., cheat on their taxes, employ undocumented labor, boast about their personal triumphs even while they falsely claim that they're suddenly interested in serving the public good). Here's a clue: most who distinguish themselves in the private sector are not going to alter their mindset of "I'm #1" when they assume public office, turn 180 degrees, and serve the collective good. They've shown they are good at serving themselves, not you or us. Trump’s disastrous policies (you can, for example, now murder a mama bear and her cubs with impunity) are exceeded by only one thing: Trump’s propensity for shooting himself in the foot, leg, or any other body part. He does this all the time because…

Trump is not going to slow his pace down and gather himself or his beleaguered staff. Wishful thinkers beware. Trump wants to hog the news cycle. He likes to read about himself, and he isn’t smart enough to know when and about what he ought to be mum about. If he is your standard bearer, did you really want as your standard bearer someone who a) only really cares about himself, and b) is utterly incompetent not just about DC, but in general?

This includes highly classified materials only known to a small circle and it includes his putting people’s lives in danger on top of the risks they already signed up for.

Trump would rather inflate his own ego talking to Russians about his great intel than recognize that he is giving Russians data he shouldn’t and that they can easily reverse-engineer this and find out the source. He didn’t even blink meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister and Ambassador in the Oval Office the day after firing Comey and lets Russian media in, but bans American media. How tone-deaf can yoube?

Can you even imagine what that incident alone, let alone what he did when the Chinese president was visiting a Mar-A-Lago restaurant and the North Koreans launched a satellite, Trump violating basic security when at least ordinary people – if not worse - had access to classified materials; his boasts before he took office that he didn’t need to see the PDB (Presidential Daily Bulletin) every day, just call him when there’s something urgent to discuss; his claims that Comey didn’t have the loyalty of the FBI behind him; the not-even-breaking-up-dinner to consider whether to authorize the Seal raid in Yemen, which quickly lost the element of surprise, resulted in many civilian casualties and a Seal member dead; that terrible speech shortly after his inauguration that he gave at the CIA, grandstanding in front of the CIA's memorial to honor those CIA employees who have been killed in the line of duty, boasting about his supposed inaugural crowd size and his victory, apparently tone deaf to what intelligence officers needed?

What do you think, with all of this – and I am only giving you the highlights of it here – add up to for the various spy and law enforcement agencies involved? Are you going to share your most precious secrets with a Man Who Can’t Keep a Secret? Are you going to risk your life or others’ lives to boost a pro-Russian POTUS’ ego?

Bureaucrats are by nature reluctant to share their secrets with other agencies. What can they be expected to do when the top person in charge doesn’t respect what they do and doesn’t understand even the most basic issues involved because his own narcissism and stupidity exceeds everything, even patriotism? Homeland Security was supposed to be the latest version of agencies sharing cross-agency information, so that 9/11 type events wouldn’t happen again. Is that going to work in the toxic atmosphere that Trump has created?

Trump lives to be controversial and to have chaos around him. Trump created a White House with rival centers on purpose. His campaign was chaotic as well. He regularly undermines what his own loyalists say and what he himself said before. These trends are not going to get better but only worse. He wants the freedom to do and say whatever is in his mind at the moment, which is precisely why he doesn't want a smooth, consistent operation, driven by consistent themes and explanations. He has routinely denied the most blatant facts because he is a con man. That won him the White House and he is not giving that up easily.

He could say to himself: “I am the President of the United States and I am the most powerful person on earth. I should be proud of that achievement and not get agitated by what anyone says about me. They are not POTUS. I am.” He could and should say that but he won’t do it for two basic reasons. One, he has a tremendous inferiority complex and a thinner skin than anyone. Two, he cannot rest easily because he knows that investigators, let alone a future set of investigations, will show him and his associates neck deep in Russia.

He knows what’s coming (From Russia With Love) and he can’t just keep on firing people, although he will keep trying, like the mortally wounded black knight of Monty Python fame. Why does Trump keep on firing people? What do the major firings all have in common: hint, it's a six letter word, starts with "R" and ends in "ussia." It is going to come out and he probably won’t be impeached – his ego won’t allow that – but he will resign, perhaps citing his family and protecting them as his cover story.

It is likely that this will happen in the next six months, possibly even as short as two months. The time is so very compressed now because Trump doesn't monitor what comes out of his mouth and has no desire to slow down. The reason for his leaving office comes down to basically one thing: he is dumber than anyone thought and doesn’t have enough brains to recognize how dumb and awkward he is. On some level, in some part of him, he may recognize this weakness in some small way, and that is why he is constantly trying to put others down so that he feels better. But he can’t stop because he is what he is. And that is going to seal his doom.

Those who think that Trump and his regime are proceeding from strength rather than fundamentally out of weakness are misunderstanding the situation. President Pence is not as crazed as Trump, but he is also going to reap the whirlwind.

While most of Trump’s base still continue to support him because they are only listening to what Fox News says, as soon as the indictments and testimony begin to occur, then it will no longer only be through the right-wing’s filter but something to watch, enthralling the way Watergate TV hearings were. Trump stops looking like a winner and starts looking like a loser "bigly."

It comes as no secret that the real Sean Spicer, whose recent words actually make up this article's title, is getting hard to distinguish from Melissa McCarthy's parody of him. Hiding himself in the bushes also doesn't help Spicer with his image-obsessed boss's mind.

"Go away, Russia, and its connection to the Trumps!" Oh, how many deeds and denials Trump has done to try to make that true! So far, Donald Trump has fired three people who were investigating his and his people's ties to Russia: acting AG Sally Yates, NY Southern District AG Preet Bharara, and now FBI Director James Comey. He can't go back in time and erase what has already happened.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 21 May 2017 19:30:38 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/russian-salad-dressing.htmlPolitical Power and How People Tend to Misunderstand Ithttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/political-power-and-how-people-tend-to-misunderstand-it.html
Political Power and How People Tend to Misunderstand It

By Dennis Loo (5/1/17)

Author’s note: If you are or were an activist, many of the terms used in this essay are going to be familiar to you. It is worth your while, however, as a non- or not-yet activist, to read this essay because the issues I am addressing are universal and we need a lot more of you to join the ranks of those who are consciously trying to change the world. However, this probably will need multiple readings and a lot of thought put in over time. This is not because I am being unclear or deliberately obscure, in fact I have done my best to make this accessible even though the subjects I’m tackling are complex. Please read the articles linked to because they help fill in the picture and are not meant as fluff or to merely repeat what the essay goes into.

Conventional and even academic wisdom about these matters is usually wrong. This article was written in the hopes of settling some questions that have been debated for a long time. Naturally, some people are more scientific than others whereas some adopt stances against this because it is frankly more comfortable for them. If you, however, care enough about those near and far from you the same, have a thoroughgoing scientific spirit and go where the evidence and logic take you, then certain of these questions WILL be settled for you.

“Think outside of the parameters you are accustomed to thinking and consider seriously what you would normally think impossible or highly improbable. That is the only way you’re going to grasp what is really going on.”

Very few individuals, for example, gave Trump a chance to win the Republican nomination, let alone winning the election. Even Trump himself. Yet, that is exactly what happened.

Some thought or engaged in wishful thinking that Trump would not adopt the radical right wing/fascist policies that he's known for already. Almost no one would've anticipated the high degree of paranoid – crazy – unhinged Trump tweets. Yet, that is exactly what happened.

One of the indicators of global warming is freakish weather events and we have an abundance of those occurring, with more to come and increasing frequency. Too little here, often too much elsewhere. The problem of refugees fleeing political and/or climate change problems is already a major political issue worldwide and will become an ever-growing problem. Rising waters is going to force people from their homes in scores of countries and island nations in the millions – or tens of millions. Facilities that are built near the ocean such as in the Northeast with military bases cannot withstand rising waters and the cost of relocating those resources is practically prohibitive.

We are, in other words, sailing into uncharted waters and facing storms the magnitude and variety of which humankind has never experienced.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 14 May 2017 16:58:23 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/sailing-into-uncharted-waters.htmlThe Part of Trump’s Tweets That Is Truehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-part-of-trump-s-tweets-that-is-true.html
The Part of Trump’s Tweets That Is True

By Dennis Loo (3/9/17)

We all have heard by now Trump’s outlandish accusation that Obama ordered Trump Tower wiretapped during the election. There is, however, a grain of truth in these tweets, although Trump is probably unaware of what is true in his claims.

The NSA has been monitoring and recording millions (now billions and billions) of electronic communications, both foreign and domestic, since at least February 2001: in other words, shortly after Bush and Cheney took the White House illegitimately, well before the events of 9/11.

When they were caught red-handed doing this, Bush and Cheney and their surrogates such as AG Alberto Gonzalez (remember him?) said at the time that they were “merely” monitoring the calls where one end at least was a known suspect. By that public criterion, the Russian Ambassador certainly was a suspect.

Obama did not order a specific wiretap on Trump Tower; he did not have to. Democrats’ claims that he must go to a FISA court before the president places a wiretap on American citizens has been passé since the Congress retroactively approved of Bush and Cheney's wiretaps in the Telecom Bill of 2008.

Objective reality has this funny thing about it: it doesn’t go away. Global warming, for example, does not stop because you deny it. The same is true of evolution: it still goes on (e.g., the flu) whether you are recognize it or not. Competence is based on taking objective reality into account. You cannot be competent if you consistently base yourself on lies. You can fool some people all of the time but not all the people all of the time. The clash between Trump and the truth is only in its early stages. Who do you think is going to win out in the end, Trump or objective reality?

Russia is the primary proximate reality that the Trump team keeps lying about and changing their stories about. There are a host of other issues that they aren't based in objective reality either, but the Russian issue is the most obvious.

Despite his efforts in the past and in the future regarding it, he will get crazier and crazier regarding this. It will be fun to see, sort of like the perverse pleasure one might get seeing an accident as it is happening, even though people are being hurt and one feels bad about that part of it. Nonetheless, no one can deserve it more than this gang of scumbags!

Trump enjoyed one day of good feelings generated by his Address to Congress, a speech that he was coached in and largely memorized, to make up for his poor reading of the teleprompter because of his reading difficulties.

Then his new Attorney General Jeff Sessions gets embroiled in scandal, twice lying to Congress about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador to the US. Who unearths these lies? Why if isn’t the “fake news” Washington Post doing its job.

The White House’s energy is increasingly being devoted to damage control. Trump is now upping the ante by demanding a Congressional investigation into his evidence-free claim that Obama tapped Trump Tower phones before leaving office.

Why doesn’t Trump demand a head count of the inauguration photos while they are at it?

Try as he might, Trump continues to be dogged by the connection between Russia and his camp. This is the one constant theme in all the breaking news that happens so rapidly it is difficult to keep up with it all.

The most recent news, of course, are Trump’s flurry of this morning's tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping. In one of these tweets, Trump misspells it as “TAPP,” the product of a low literacy individual:

How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

It doesn't occur to a person who lacks basic reasoning skills that the tweet itself displays a contradiction - he admits in the tweet no evidence can be found to back up his thesis that he has been bugged. Evidence, smevidence! Who cares if you have evidence?

Contrary to various articles that have been written about the 35-page Russian dossier (here is an example), the news here is mainly not Russian attempts to intervene in the US presidential race and thus make it less than “legitimate” since it was already illegitimate to begin with. What media accounts overlook in the dossier are the significance of Russian – Trump camp ongoing contacts based on their communality of interests.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, in keeping with his other Trump team members, believes that truth is what you say it is, not actual independently verifiable events. When he swears on a Bible that he won't lie, wouldn't possibly, or else the Bible would catch on fire, we can believe him, right? I mean lying to the House and Senate in confirmation hearings doesn't mean you committed perjury, correct?

And when Trump himself declares that he has “full confidence” in so-and-so, such as Michael Flynn or Jeff Sessions, that is a sign that so-and-so is in trouble and about to resign.

This must also mean that trouble for his cabinet doesn't mean trouble in his administration or for the country or the world. Disorder in the White House does not translate into disorder from their policies.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 03 Mar 2017 04:59:00 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/trump-and-his-inner-circle-crumbling.htmlAre Media An &quot;Enemy of the People&quot;?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/are-media-an-enemy-of-the-people.html
Are Media An "Enemy of the People"?

By Dennis Loo (2/26/17)

Trump and his White House are claiming that media are an "enemy of the American people," that Trump's choice of words are deliberate and dead serious, that blocking certain members of the mainstream news from his "news" conferences is appropriate, and that boycotting the funfest White House Correspondents Dinner is also. It seems appropriate that several different dimensions to this be addressed.

First of all, why is Trump trying to eliminate views and facts he doesn't like from even being considered? It's one thing to disagree, but another thing altogether to say no one should dare to say things that differ from what I (POTUS) say and that their doing so makes them an "enemy of the state" and justifies physically barring them from press "briefings." What state are you trying to establish then? One in which dissent per se is criminalized? Yes, indeed, that's what they are doing.

Moreover, doesn't this look exactly like a form of political correctness turned inside-out? Isn't he saying that we should deal with contrasting views from our own by banishing them!? Doesn't that make the infamous critic of political correctness a full-on hypocrite?

Second, the Trump camp's efforts to make people who disagree with them "shut up," besides the fact that the effort to do so is fascist - it is the very definition of fascist and I am using the word not as an insult but scientifically - and not just partisanship bickering, as some are seeing it as, reflects strategic weakness on their part, not strength. Trump and his Trumpists are saying that we will tell you what's true and what isn't, no matter what your eyes may tell you, and you will believe it and like it, because we say so. If what you say is true, then your attitude towards those who might disagree with you is not to censor them but to actively invite debate and free discussion. For truth emerges through contention and lies proliferate in darkness. Lies or mistakes cannot stand close examination and will wilt and die from debate and discussion. I say it's strategic weakness on their part because if your ideas are so good, then you don't have to try to eliminate contrary ideas and challenges to your ideas, because good ideas will stand up before a challenge and are in fact improved by challenge, not harmed or weakened. The attempt to rid the society of contending ideas and facts (which is like ridding us of smoke from a fire) shows weakness and fear that your ideas are not, in fact, so strong since you must bully away those other ideas and facts, rather than invite them in.

Keith Olbermann in his February 22, 2017 broadcast of his show “The Resistance” takes what we know from the public record about the intelligence community (IC) and its relationship with Trump and goes on to infer some conclusions based upon that. To summarize his argument in its briefest form: the IC is slowly killing the Trump presidency but Trump is too stupid to see the writing on the wall.

For his part, Trump and his camp do realize that they have a difficult - to say the least - relationship to the IC and are trying to reduce the IC’s significance, including by reducing its numbers and its role. In a New York Times’ February 17, 2017 article, for example, some of the back-and-forth is detailed and Rep. King, a reliable ally of the more reactionary elements in power, is quoted:

“Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, said in a recent interview that some officials in the intelligence community were trustworthy but ‘not all.’ ‘People there need to be rooted out,’ Mr. King said.” Sounds like McCarthyism, doesn’t it?

As you know, Trump and his people have been saying lately that mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, Time et al are “fake news” and have gone so far as to say that they are “enemies” of the American people.

In particular, Chief of Staff Reince Preibus made the rounds of the weekend talk shows to repeat his boss’ claims that the widespread reports that there have been frequent contacts between the Trump camp and Russia are totally false. Preibus also said that the (common and necessary practice of) news media of citing anonymous sources was wrong and that people should always be named if they're in news accounts.

“One of these things just doesn’t belong here,” as they sing-a-long on Sesame Street. Of course, the two - Trump and Objective Reality - exist alongside each other in a most uneasy way, with Trump insisting that what he says is true because, well, he said it, ergo it is, no matter what. Anyone who says any different is “the enemy,” “fake news,” and “dishonest.”

On the one hand, Trump represents a continuation of a trend that began some decades ago which Obama was the previous most egregious purveyor of untruth, but Trump and objective reality know no relationship whatsoever, with a Trump untruth just hanging out there like a sore thumb.

Before going on, let’s deal with a concern that many have expressed: if we get rid of that pest Trump, we are left with Pence, and then we’ll have a competent reactionary rather than that clown Trump. What people need to visualize is that the level of political mobilization that is going to be required to force a Trump resignation – in the tens of millions – means that this dramatic change in the political balance of forces does not just go away with a Pence presidency. Pence will not act like a crazy person the way Trump does, but he will confront a thoroughly aroused populace and will be restricted by that. If he pushes too hard in the face of that, well, then he can face the whirlwind that brought his predecessor down.

I will summarize what I will say next at near the start: if you construct your plans or policies on lies that bear no relation to objective reality, then those plans may only go so far as your power to persuade people of lies can go. That is to say, not very far at all. Objective reality has a way of asserting itself eventually.

Given that the current administration got into office because of leaks in the first place and Trump went so far as to say he loves Wikileaks and publicly called for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton and the DNC’s emails, for him to try to now make the issue leaks and not contest the truth of said leaks, means that he does not understand how investigative journalism works in the first place or the media’s role in general.

Leaks and anonymous sources are part of how newspapers’ stories are written. If the news media did not use them as part of what they do, and verify those leaks or sources as not just coming from one source alone, they could not do their jobs. If bureaucrats and other authorities were banned from ever speaking anonymously and could only be attributed by name, and never off the record or speaking about background, then the press would become only official mouthpieces for the government, relying exclusively on government press releases only.

“CBS News has learned that on Thursday, an angry President Trump called CIA Director Mike Pompeo and yelled at him for not pushing back hard enough against reports that the intelligence community was withholding information from the commander-in-chief.”

For the nation and planet’s sake, and for his own sake, we need to relieve Trump from his duties as POTUS. The man is clearly not happy in the job and didn’t want it in the first place. He did not expect to win the nomination or the election. What he really wanted originally was a better deal from NBC for The Apprentice. We need do him and ourselves a favor by getting him back where he belongs as a reali-TV star.

After watching David Pakman’s two recent episodes of February 2, 2017 and February 6, 2017 on Trump’s low literacy rate, initially raised by Samantha Bee’s show Full Frontal on October 31, 2016, Trump’s peculiar behavior is even better explained by his low literacy than by his narcissism, as extreme as the narcissism is. (You should watch these shows before you continue.) His narcissism can, in fact, be at least partially explained by his reading problems since empathy, the ability to put you in someone else’s shoes, is what reading helps develop.

I am a university professor and what I have to say next is informed by that experience. I am also very interested in and apply in practice in my teaching and in other aspects of my life my evolving understanding of how we become critical thinkers. The upshot of this is this: how we learn, what we learn, and how we end up making decisions, are all bound together.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 26 Feb 2017 16:58:03 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/a-case-for-removing-trump-reasons-why-literacy-matters.htmlWhat is the Effect of Trump's Denials About Russia?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/what-is-the-effect-of-trump-s-denials-about-russia.html
What is the Effect of Trump's Denials About Russia?

By Dennis Loo (1/12/17)

Trump's political theater meets the political establishment. Who will win out? On the one hand, the political establishment largely wants to get along and accomodate to the new President-Elect, even if some of that is obviously wishful thinking (Tom Brokaw take note). On the other hand, Trump is going to be himself, including making public denials that he knows are false. Whether he knows the difference between truth and falsehood is, however, an open question. It seems from the record that he will say whatever he thinks will work for him in the short-run, let facts take a backseat.

He got this far in business and got the surprising result of winning the election. But a Trump twitter storm cannot cancel out certain facts permanently. Donald Trump, Jr., already in 2008, said on the record that the Trump businesses are getting a disproportionate share of Russian money. Trump made no secret of his admiration of authoritarian leaders, including Putin in particular, and repeatedly called for Russia to hack Clinton. Trump helped Russia with Ukraine by first his denial that Russia was even in Ukraine and then later raising skepticism towards NATO. Trump has already played the fool for Russia. He has already shown what he will do on behalf of Russia because it's already been going on.

Iowa and the rest of Trump-land is not paying any attention to the allegations of the dossier against Trump, but that is temporary. The combination of grassroots' efforts to prevent him from taking power and his ties to Russia (even if a video of him with prostitutes never surfaces) is going to probably going to sink this man.

The unfolding scandal involving the former MI-6 operative’s highly disturbing report on Trump and his team is the subject of this commentary.

As a preface to this, some pertinent general observations:

While surely Trump can be called out for and convicted of treason, I don’t share the perspective of US leaders and their rivalry with the Russians. What Trump and his team are, however, up to, is collusion that is mutually profitable to Trump and his business partners. It is from that vantage point, not nationalism that Trump, his family and camp, and his Russian oligarchs, are primarily proceeding from.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:19:41 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/making-russian-oligarchs-great-again.htmlNO! We Must Stop Trump/Pence Before They Take Powerhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/no-we-must-stop-trump-pence-before-they-take-power.html
Regarding the statement that follows that appeared in Wednesday's NY Times as a full-page ad - One of the questions people ask is: "how is it possible for so many people to gather in such a short time frame?" First of all, Egypt is an example of millions gathering in a very short time. At the time the call went out for an unprecedented outpouring, the organizers were very small and did not know whether others would join them or not. But if there were only a few, they were determined to stand up anyway. That is the spirit people must start from because there are no guarantees in matters such as these. So if you are one of those who say "It can't be done" then you are not coming at this in the right frame of mind and you aren't responding with full understanding of what we face with Trump/Pence. Is there any question in your mind that if they are allowed the reins of power, exceedingly, unprecendentedly, terrible disasters will ensue? If so, Sunsara Taylor's words featured on the website citing Pastor Martin Neimoller's other words are worth taking seriously: if we in Germany had stood up and prevented Hitler from taking power perhaps 30-40,000 of us would have died, but tens of millions would have been spared and history would have been dramatically altered. We face a similar situation right now.

In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America!

Donald Trump, the President-elect, is assembling a regime of grave danger. Millions of people in the US and around the world are filled with deep anxiety, fear, and disgust. Our anguish is right and just. Our anger must now become massive resistance –before Donald Trump is inaugurated and has the full reins of power in his hands.

Should we fail to rise with determination and daring in our millions now to stop this, the consequences for humanity will be disastrous. We, the undersigned, know in the depths of our beings, the catastrophe that will befall the people of the world should the Trump/Pence regime assume full power.

We therefore CALL FOR A MONTH OF RESISTANCE beginning on December 19th, reaching a crescendo by the January 20th 2017 Inauguration.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 11 Jan 2017 18:47:22 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/no-we-must-stop-trump-pence-before-they-take-power.htmlWhy Trump’s Election is So Upsetting - and What Can Be Donehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/why-trump-s-election-is-so-upsetting-and-what-can-be-done.html
Why Trump’s Election is So Upsetting - and What Can Be Done

By Dennis Loo (11/17/16)

People sense on a visceral level that a person who did almost everything it is possible to do wrong, did just that during the campaign, who had to change campaign teams three times because he ran into so many scandals and difficulty, who is morally corrupt in the worst possible way, makes fun of babies, immigrants, disabled people et al and dares to do this in front of large crowds, oozes bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, and fear and loathing at almost everyone who is not named Donald J. Trump (unless he wants to sexually assault them or fail to pay them for work they did), who is spectacularly ill-informed, stupid, and who is too dumb and lacking in the most elemental self-awareness to even dimly understand what he doesn’t know, whose team and he did not expect to win, who violates just about everything decent and proper, who makes up facts to serve his purposes at the drop of a hat, and who seems the least meritorious person possible, should not be rewarded with the POTUS.

I watched much of NBC's coverage last night regarding how Trump needs to act not as candidate but as president and how he needs to bring the country together. Obama said we are not Democrats and Republicans but Americans.

For those who are hoping to put lipstick on a pig, I have a question: how do you seek to find common ground with someone who's convinced and whose whole career to date is based on seeing others of a different race, religion, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and values as not just different but wrong, a threat, and inferior?

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 06 Dec 2016 18:50:29 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/common-ground-trump-s-potus.html&quot;Who are You to Say?&quot; Reprisehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/who-are-you-to-say-reprise.html
"Who are You to Say?" Reprise

By Dennis Loo (10/18/16)

I am republishing an article of mine that dates from a little over two years ago. It covers in depth certain key questions that are posed by this election and by these times. Some of these questions are timeless and some are more particular but if you are in any way dissatisfied with the level of public discourse now and even with the heightened level that key questions are analyzed and addressed in whatever arena (e.g., particpating and attending or presenting at a university, studying from a book of philosophy...) you may be in, this article devotes concentrated analysis to these issues. You will want to spend time mulling over these questions and reread very thoroughly sections of this piece to savor what is there because if you are an open-minded person and you sincerely want to figure out what's going on and what to do about it, then this was written with you in mind. Pay close attention to what is said and how it is said because the message and how the message is delivered are all important and apply to many different things.

For example, its discussion of the necessary and inevitable connection between freedom and necessity has major implications. Its discussion of the relationship between leadership, the led, and the true nature of group life bears close attention:

"If material reality exists, then distinctions must be made between different interpretations or understandings of what exists or else material reality (e.g., the greenhouse effect caused by burning fossil fuels) will slap you in the face, regardless of whether you want to recognize it or not. The question of material reality may be understood to include importantly within it the question of what is necessity relative to freedom. If you act as if there are no necessities and refuse to take necessities into account (e.g., global warming and ice caps melting due to it), then you are less free, not more free."

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 03 Jan 2017 19:57:25 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/who-are-you-to-say-reprise.htmlWhat Even One Person Can Dohttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/what-even-one-person-can-do.html
What Even One Person Can Do

By Dennis Loo (8/5/16)

The New York Times reported August 1, 2016 that only 9% of the American people voted for the major party nominees to be Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

I’ll say that again: 9% determined that these two should be the rest of the nation’s choices for POTUS.

Yet despite how small a percentage this is, these two nominees and the two parties dominate the airwaves and print media. The pundits and politicians – even satirists - tell us that we have no other choice but to vote for either Clinton or Trump, if we act politically at all.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 06 Dec 2016 18:50:02 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/what-even-one-person-can-do.htmlBe Careful What You Wish For: Is Clinton Your Only Choice?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-is-clinton-your-only-choice.html
Be Careful What You Wish For: Is Clinton Your Only Choice?

By Dennis Loo (8/1/16)

Donald Trump just keeps getting wilder and more bizarre. Here's someone who simply can't keep his defective opinions to himself and is unable to resist showing the whole world how "great" he is, revealing in the process how completely uninformed and lacking in some of the most basic, let alone presidential, sense he has. We are witnesses to the spectacle of an out-of-control narcissist who can barely and only sometimes manages to complete a thought and sentence, usually interrupting himself with interjections after interjections. Talk about a short-attention span!

A few days ago, it looked like Clinton in suppressing liberals, in or drawn to the Democrats, or at least in the case of their putative leaders Sanders and Warren, giving Trump a free pass to be the outsider.

Clinton's committed to children? Just as long as they aren't children born in other nations, like the half a million Iraqi children to die under the Clinton sanctions, a price Madeleine Albright has publicly and explicitly called "worth it."

As for Trump, they're going to have to invent a new term for foot in mouth. Perhaps "little hands" in his mouth?

Last night the nation was treated to the spectacle of the Democratic Party's liberal "political revolution" leaders declare victory while cravenly surrendering to the centrist Hillary Clinton crowd. In preaching "togetherness," not only are they folding their tents into Clinton's but the Democrats are neglecting - fatally - to recognize that the nation is indeed divided. These divisions Trump understands very well and will likely beat them because of this myopia.

Why indeed should anybody who recognizes that the gap between rich and poor, the 1% and the 99%, the bankers' dominance, the demise of privacy and civil liberties, women's reproductive rights, the rise of bigotry and nativism, just about every day another police murder of a black person, mass incarceration, the further destruction of Main Street, thousands killed by Obama's drones, his failure to end GTMO, the TPP, global warming!, multiple wars going on started by the US, et al, have occurred and/or continued and been made worse under a Democratic President?

It is inevitably a feature of systems that when they are in danger of being replaced, that the times this comes in is full of sound and fury. The rise of the right is part of this process as an inexorable feature of that tumultuous scene. So don't freak out in the face of this. It's part of that scene. The Trumps of the world should be taken very seriously but no genuine chance for a real revolution against this system - the opposite of what people like the Trump want - can happen when the system reveals its truest baldest truly ugly face except in such times.

There's a lot of hopeful talk right now by Trump, and his followers, about how he is going to provide Americans jobs, especially manufacturing ones (as long as they're not Mexicans! Tell that to California whose economy depends on Mexican labor!)

Clinton, for her part, speaks of a working partnership between businesses and employees and of narrowing the huge gap between the rich and the rest. Wall Street is sophisticated enough to know that Clinton doesn't really intend to bridge these gaps, and only must say this now because the Democrats are supposed to sound to the left of the GOP.

Trump says further that he is going to reverse globalization's trends in trade agreements that have gutted Main Street. He promises to "Make America Great (and Safe) Again." Clinton promises to do this non-divisively, unlike her very divisive opponent.

Trump's unexpected win of the Republican nomination that took the GOP establishment and all of the pundits completely by surprise (and their mostly outright hostility, except the bootlicker Christie) and brought a record number in their party to vote for him, and Sanders, who was also expected to be soundly defeated, almost upended Clinton, who's been shooting for the presidency since at least her Wellesley years.

Let's be clear: no one, no matter what their real intentions are, can within the political system undo or even really modify what the economic system's logic drives it to do. As long as America is a superpower and an Empire, only comparable to the Roman Empire at its peak, it can only operate as Empires and superpowers do, which means that wars and globalization will continue under either Clinton or Trump. Police violence against blacks - next to Native Americans the most negatively impacted by these policies - will not end as long as this system remains. Jobs will continue disappearing to where labor is cheapest because it is fundamental to businesses' bottom line. Customer service will overall get worse as corporate America gets bigger and cares less and less about us. Student and credit card debt will continue to soar. And so on ad nauseum.

As a professor, I have seen more than a few examples of the plagiarism that Melania Trump was guilty of last night.

This is probably what happened and is the least convoluted explanation possible. Whichever speechwriter drafted her speech had to have knowingly copied and pasted the portion of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech used and intended to later on revise it so that where it came from was no longer apparent. After copying and pasting it, however, s/he forgot what s/he copied verbatim and then failed to extensively revise their copying Michelle.

No one in the Trump camp was smart or aware enough to spot the plagiarism and certainly Melania, who claimed to Matt Lauer that she wrote this speech herself – obviously not true and no one of that prominence giving a speech of that significance is going to write it all by themselves anyway – wasn’t aware that she was restating what Michelle had said.

The GOP Convention started today and the Democrats are going to have their's next week. Watching some of the GOP convention footage is so laughable and so awful it's like watching a car accident involving numerous vehicles happen in slow motion with clowns in a circus ring.

In light of the deluge of promises that both Trump and Clinton have made and will make, I thought it might be useful to cite just a few of the outright lies told by our incumbent, who has made a fetish of promises and breaking them, while rhetorically claiming to keep his promises. Unlike Clinton and Trump who both have record high unfavorability ratings, making it the first time in US history that both candidates are more unpopular than they are popular, Obama came into office and got re-elected with higher approval ratings than disapproval. Yet consider what he has actually done compared to the empty promises that "we are going to win so big" (Trump) and that we will "do it together" (Clinton).

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 19 Jul 2016 18:30:59 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/politicians-promises-and-what-they-re-worth.htmlIf You Thought by Voting for the &quot;Lesser Evil&quot;http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/if-you-thought-by-voting.html
If You Thought By Voting for the "Lesser Evil"

By Dennis Loo (7/16/16)

If you're like most people, you believe that this system gives you the right to choose "the lesser evi" and that your vote for that, if joined by 50% of others who also voted your way, then you will indeed get the "lesser evil" and avoid the greater evil.

I am going to share as an example of what you're going to get from Clinton and compare that to Trump:

Ex-CIA analyst George McGovern attended a February, 2011, talk given by Hillary Clinton in which she was extolling those in Egypt and Iran who were standing up against their governments' attempts to repress them. These were examples, she said, of people exercising their precious right to freely speak out and to assemble, a right that is honored in the US but not by dictators. As she was saying these very words, George McGovern, who is an elderly pacifist, stood up in the audience a few rows from where Clinton was speaking, turned his back to her and took off his outer garment, revealing underneath his white t-shirt that said "Veterans for Peace" with a dove in it. In response to this silent act and in full view of Clinton, who continued talking throughout McGovern's quiet protest, security officers rushed in and manhandled McGovern, bloodying him in the process of hustling him away while Clinton spoke of the virtues of American's honoring free speech, not missing a beat and acting as though nothing awry was going on. Here is a video and a description of the full event.

For sure Sanders is not going to be the Democratic nominee and for sure he is in the race objectively to draw the very disaffected into the illusion that they have a voice until the time comes when Sanders bows out gracefully and endorses Hillary. And then all of those or most of those who have been so energized by his candidacy will swallow the poison pill of "realism," and vote for Clinton, the "lesser evil." Never mind that the Democrat is not the lesser evil than the Republican, just the more reasonable and less reactionary sounding one, but no less an imperialist in their policies.

“No, it's not about the lesser of two evils,” Sanders said before listing a number of issues, including minimum wage, college affordability and health care, where he said his formal rival would help working families.

...

“I think what Secretary Clinton is going to have to do is get around the country and contrast her views to Donald Trump's,” Sanders said. “This is not a beauty contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton. This is the fact that the middle class* of this country is in trouble. Which candidate has more to say about education, more to say about health care, more to say about climate change … and the more the people hear the contrast between the two, I think Secretary Clinton's support will grow.”

The preceding quote from a Trump supporter captures the essence of Trump's wide appeal. Trump's racism and sexism are not what mainly characterizes his attractiveness to his legions. He would be dead in the water were he not pitching an economic populist line. He has no shortage of followers who are knuckle draggers, but this would not be a mass following without the anti-globalization appeal.

David Brooks predicted yesterday at The New York Times that an open/closed political alignment is coming and that Trump’s popularity is a harbinger of that world political shift.

It’s certainly possible, indeed, very likely that Brooks’ prediction will come true, irrespective of whether or not Trump wins the coming election – a highly unlikely scenario - although who, including Trump himself, could have foreseen his decisive Republican primary victories?

Probably Hillary Clinton will win but no matter who does, pro-globalization elites will prevail for a while, a few more years, even under a Trump presidency because he is incapable of transforming the entire bureaucratic/institutional edifice that has been building for so many decades, even if Trump sincerely wanted to. Can you imagine a narcissist’s narcissist as he is, applying his painstaking and determined, complicated and protracted efforts, to lead a mass movement to do that? He’d have to replace the institutions from top to bottom and have the people capable of taking over…

In today’s New York Times David Brooks predicts a future American political alignment that he calls “open/closed,” as in trade walls:

I personally doubt that Trump will be able to pull off a right-left populist coalition. His views on women and minorities are unacceptable to nearly everybody on the left. There’s no evidence that he’s winning over many Sanders voters or downscale progressives.

But where Trump fails, somebody else will succeed. And that’s where he’s substantively revolutionary. The old size-of-government question [the GOP’s small government rhetoric v. the Democrat’s big government] was growing increasingly archaic and obsolete. In country after country the main battle lines of debate are evolving toward the open/closed framework.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 17 Jul 2016 13:11:55 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/david-brooks-jessica-williams-and-political-alignments.htmlThe Difference Between the Way Things Are and Where the Public Is Athttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-difference-between-the-way-things-are-and-where-the-public-is-at.html
The Difference Between the Way Things Are and Where the Public Is At

By Dennis Loo (6/26/16)

I am going to cover a few complex things here so you will probably need to read this several times.

To begin with, the two elements that I cite in the title tend to be confounded as one and the same thing in most people’s minds: the situation in the nation or world is viewed by most people as the way it is because public opinion is the way it is.

The objective situation – e.g., the reigning public policies in the various nations and the dominant economic system of capitalism – are not a result of most of the public wanting these to be in command.

As almost everyone who reads or listens to the news knows, the UK voted yesterday to leave the European Union (EU). The pound is taking a pounding. PM John Cameron was caught by surprise, thinking when he scheduled this referendum on the EU that he wouldn’t face a populist revolt.

All across the world political elites see their neoliberalist policies increasingly unpopular as the injustice and unfairness of them become clearer and clearer to anyone outside the top 5% income and asset bracket of the people. It’s even clear to those inside the top tier, but most of them are happy about it rather than alarmed.

If you consider Trump’s popularity and you add in Bernie Sanders’ falling short of beating Hillary Clinton by only some 1.5 million primary voters in total, you have two candidates, one the GOP’s putative nominee, the other an almost nominee, but both of them only nominally affiliated with their respective parties.

Assuming the GOP’s fractured leadership fails to block Trump at the GOP Convention, we will have two official nominees who both have higher unfavorability ratings than anyone who has ever run for the American Presidency.

Everyone who’s been paying any attention at all to the GOP’s leadership and major donors’ divided reaction to Trump’s unconcealed racism, sexism, anti-immigrant and all-around general belligerent idiocies knows that the GOP leadership is trying desperately to put daylight between Trump and themselves.

It’s no secret, however, to anyone older than a child, that the GOP, even without Trump, is known for its racism, sexism, anti-immigrant, homophobia, and xenophobia. The GOP is famous for its contempt for due process, its saber rattling and love of violence.

So what is animating the GOP’s antipathy for their standard bearer? It’s not Trump’s bigotry but that he isn’t being coy or coded in his language. “No one,” as Trump can be easily imagined to say, “is as good as I am in being a bigot. No one is more of a xenophobe, no one is as contemptuous of women, hostile to minorities and immigrants and more of a Christian fascist and anti-civil liberties person than I am!” He’s taking the GOP “respectable” fascism et al and letting it all hang out, revealing nakedly how odious those views are.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are taking a lot of heat for their third and fourth quarter woes in last night's Game Four of the NBA Finals against the Warriors, but it's not really their fault.

When you're tired - which is what the Warriors will do to you - you make mistakes, lose focus, and revert to old habits.

Unless you come out more aggressive than the defending NBA Champions and establish a big lead on them, and the Warriors in turn have their worst game of the season (see Game 3), you can't beat the math of 3-pointers vs. 2-pointers. The Warriors' ability to switch on just about everybody in defense and their Game 4 aggressiveness, relentless ball movement, and spreading the floor with made threes from multiple players (Curry, Thompson, Green, Iguodala, Barnes, even Speights in some games), and the spark that Varejao has consistently given them off the bench, along with Shaun Livingstone providing point duties and reliable twos, cannot be beat unless you have the best game of your season (see Game 3) and the Warriors are far off their best.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 23 Jun 2016 17:06:18 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/new-ball-vs-old-ball-warriors-go-3-1-on-the-cavs.htmlThe Warriors and the New Paradigm in Basketballhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-warriors-and-the-new-paradigm-in-basketball.html
The Warriors and the New Paradigm in Basketball

By Dennis Loo (6/7/16)

New standards for the highest level in a sport or any other arena come along periodically. In football the Vince Lombardi “establish the ground game first” and use the pass as a supplement to the ground game was initially challenged by Al Davis and John Madden’s 1970s’ Oakland Raiders’ whose philosophy was to score and score and score, on the conviction that they could outscore any team that was trying to grind out a ground game win Lombardi style. Then came Bill Walsh (who along with Madden had trained in the Sid Gilman coaching tree) who developed the “West Coast Offense” that the 1980s’ San Francisco 49ers had such great success with and that has become football’s philosophy to this day.

In these past two NBA seasons we are seeing the early stages of a new paradigm being spearheaded by the Warriors. Whether the Dubs’ coaching staff is fully conscious about this paradigm as what they are doing is unclear, but it is definitely a new model for basketball that others are going to have to try to emulate if they intend to compete for the title.

The Warriors this season set the record for most regular season wins ever and is going to set the regular season plus playoffs record too. Cleveland is not just suffering from being from the weaker Eastern Conference. Despite having LeBron James, a healthy Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, the Cavs are on the losing end of the Warriors’ game style.

Last June, 2015, Dennis Trainor, Jr. interviewed me on the rise of ISIS and the US invasion of Iraq. It makes helpful viewing now in the wake of the Brussels' terrorist attacks and the call by our government for more of the very same policies - state terror - that spawned these terrorist attacks and the birth of ISIS themselves. In other words, the US government wants to drown the raging fire by pouring more gasoline on the fire they created in the first place! See “ISIS and Empire Follies Part 2.”

The reason I call Obama's plan "empire follies" is because even by the US government's own standards - i.e., the imperialist logic of defending and expanding their far-flung empire of plunder and domination - Obama's relentless air attacks plus on the ground support from allies will not and cannot work. They will kill many people, both those they are explicitly targeting in ISIS and innocents who they are inevitably going to be mostly killing, and destroy infrastructure that supports people's lives on the ground, and this will produce some losses to ISIS. But any gains in the US's air campaign against ISIS, even leaving aside the far bigger issue of tremendous increased suffering of the masses in Syria and Iraq (and who knows where else), will be far outweighed by the intense hatred against the US that the "war on terror" (including the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the ongoing use of drones to kill thousands, torture, etc.) has generated, directly fueling the rise of even more virulent versions (if that is possible) of religious fundamentalism than ISIS.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 12 Jun 2016 02:28:18 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/belgium-and-isis-s-creation.htmlDonald Trump and the Historic American Social Compacthttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/donald-trump-and-the-historic-american-social-compact.html
Donald Trump and the Historic American Social Compact

By Dennis Loo (3/15/16)

Donald Trump’s surprising rise and popularity and the equally surprising durability of Bernie Sanders, an openly “socialist” candidate for a major party nomination, are both opposite responses to the collapsing historic American social compact.

It is also an indication that the forces that the GOP has so happily been courting for so long – those who tend to live in trailer parks with no more than a high school education and who love their Jesus – have found their voice, unadorned by any subtleties or coded language, just straight-up belligerence and open bigotry in Donald Trump whose rise to prominence has been wholly due to his venting the politics of resentment without apology. The chickens are coming home to roost. And if they drop a lot of chicken poop when they appear, then you shouldn't be surprised,

For a time, those who were so enthused by Obama’s election publicly asked: Is racism over? But even with a half-black POTUS, and with more black faces in charge of major institutions such as the Attorney General’s Office, racism is getting worse, with more blacks dying at cops’ hands than they were being lynched during the height of the KKK’s reign of terror. It is very popular now to be openly racist and sexist in many quarters.

Back on May 28, 2014 I published an article here entitled "The Paradox of Individualism." I am going to spell this particular paradox out more explicitly than I do in the article so that the discussion and thinking about this can go on on a higher level:

If a person says, on the one hand, that we are free as individuals to do as we please and that the character of systems are a product exclusively or mainly of individual decisions rather than mainly due to system logic, and then says, on the other hand, that there is this immutable thing called "human nature" and that nature is to be selfish, then the logical results of this line of reasoning are two-fold:

1) things will supposedly never change and systems that changed over the course of human history (hunting and gathering societies, domestication of animals and planting of crops, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism) weren't really a change and are all essentially the same (e.g., women are still men's property as men can do with them whatever they want with no repercussions and blacks are still enslaved and lots of people have no rights)because "human nature" is unchanging and the notion of any progress is an illusion; BUT

2) individuals all have free will so they are "free" to express themselves any way they want - as long as what they want to be is selfish.

This last point reminds me of Henry Ford's famous statement about the Model T: "They can have any color they want as long as it's black."

When your greatest runner happens to also be your quarterback, and when you're dealing with the NFL's best defense, if you are the Carolina Panthers and you're in Super Bowl 50, do you design and stay with an offensive plan that:

a) sends a sole running back - Jonathan Stewart - repeatedly into the line, with minimal fakery, and into maximum traffic, gaining none or minimal yards all but once in something like 12-15 attempts (maybe more);

The answer is D, if you want to give Peyton Manning his 200th career win and frustrate your own team that has won all but one of its games this season going into the Super Bowl and were 17-1 counting the end of last season.

This has to be as an overall offensive game plan, the most offensive game plan I have ever seen, equal in bone-headedness only to the worse single play-call in last year's Super Bowl by the Seattle Seahawks' offensive co-ordinator at the end. Yet none of the so-called football analysts said anything about the Panther's repeated reliance on said dismal game plan.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:55:25 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/bad-offensive-game-plan-spelled-carolina-s-defeat.htmlOn the Idea that &quot;Things Will Never Change&quot;http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/on-the-idea-that-things-will-never-change.html
On the Idea that "Things Will Never Change"

By Dennis Loo (12/15/15)

Revised and supplemented

One can very frequently hear some version of the following from many people:

“The powerful will always misuse their power and mistreat those who are not in power. Even if the people who are out of power came to power, they will act just like those whose places they just took. It’s useless to fight the power. The powerful will always win in the end. So accept the way things are.”

Is this a widespread belief because millions of people have studied this question, looking at history and economic and political systems over the span of human societies’ existence and all arrived at the same conclusion after painstaking study and specialized training in the tools of social science?

By way of introduction to my discussion of this hypothetical quote that begins this article:

We are social creatures so as a rule we usually try to stay within a group – with there being natural variation along a spectrum for this norm - because being away from the group is not comfortable for most people most of the time and can cause us to literally die under some circumstances. But in order to see things clearly and correctly, this frequently means that you have to be willing to stand outside of the prevailing norm. Truth is not a simple thing to obtain and it usually involves a personal cost exacted for its acquisition. Remember Prometheus? Truth is not like low-hanging fruit. Finding out what’s true in a complex world is a complicated endeavor.

It’s not in the interest of the current system that you find out how the political system really operates and it’s not in their interest that you find out what’s true in many arenas in life. You have to fight very hard and against the grain to learn the truth and then you have to try to get others to see what’s true, which is also difficult because what you’re telling them goes against what they have been told so often and by so many for so long. This is even more the case if they are among those who actually benefit from the status quo. If they are among that group of people, it is extremely hard and, in many instances, impossible to convince people of what’s true if what’s true goes against their personal interests. Those who catch hell from the system everyday, however, or those who are observant and care about justice, are a very different audience.

As someone who regularly interacts with students and others about political power and so on, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard this sentiment cited at the beginning . . . Not only do I hear it incessantly, it's boring to hear this tired nostrum, spoken with the assurance of absolute certainty! How is it that so many people can be so dead certain about something that is in fact ... not at all true?

Let's first look at the question of the alleged invincibility of the ones in power and the supposed perpetuity of the system they govern.

This is from someone who actually studied the empirical data:

A political scientist named Ivan Arreguin-Toft compiled the data a few years ago by looking at lopsided wars over the last two hundred years. Malcolm Gladwell in David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants cites Arreguin-Toft’s data.

When the underdog uses conventional warfare against his/her vastly superior rival, the underdog wins almost a third of the time: 28.5% to be precise. Hardly a recipe that conforms to what the majority of people believe so emphatically that they would call the victory of a superior force a slam dunk.

Here’s where the data get much more interesting: when the underdog uses unconventional warfare to fight against their vastly superior enemy, the underdog’s winning rate goes from about a third of the time to 63.6% of the time.[1]

After Paris and now San Bernardino, the world wants to know: how do you stop this cycle of violence?

It’s a legitimate question. But it’s like walking into a movie 45 minutes after it started and trying to figure out what’s going on without knowing how what’s going on got triggered in the first place.

World leaders want you to think that the only thing going on is these terrible acts of (anti-state) terrorism and they want the public to endorse their “war on terror” (state terror) which is like drinking more poison from the poison bottle that made you sick in the first place.

You stop drinking the poison, first of all.

Terror, for the record, is a tactic that is distinguishable by the fact that those who employ it are either deliberately targetting innocent bystanders or so indifferent about the casualties that their violent actions will cause, that they might as well be consciously targetting non-combatants.

Both anti-state and state terror share this distinguishing trait. It's what makes an action terror and makes it different than other kinds of violence. Torture, drones that have killed thousands of innocents (including hundreds of children) and that include "double-tapping," preventive and indefinite detention for crimes you might commit and in which due process has been suspended replaced with the presumption of guilt, invading and occupying countries that were not threatening you and had nothing to do with 9/11 (the supreme international war crime per Nuremberg), dropping anti-personnel weapons on innocent gatherings like wedding parties and hospitals: these are all forms of state terror. I hardly need to elaborate on the atrocities committed by anti-state terrorists since you can read about that in the media everyday.

Here is an excerpt from a 2005Foreign Affairs article. Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations and it's one of the places where the people who make public policy talk more openly and more frankly debate among themselves about what is going on and what they should do:

The current war in Iraq will generate a ferocious blowback of its own, which -- as a recent classified CIA assessment predicts -- could be longer and more powerful than that from Afghanistan. Foreign volunteers fighting U.S. troops in Iraq today will find new targets around the world after the war ends.

This was in 2005. This was after al-Qaeda had been created as the first bitter fruit of that “ferocious blowback,” producing 9/11 in 2001, but before the second bitter fruit of blowback, ISIS, came into being.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 24 Dec 2015 17:39:57 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/how-do-you-stop-terrorism.htmlWhy Does the Devil Do God's Work?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/why-does-the-devil-do-god-s-work.html
Why Does the Devil Do God's Work for Him?

By Dennis Loo (1/2/15)

If the Devil is God's adversary - whom the Bible tells us he is, his polar opposite - why doesn't the Devil reward people instead of punishing them for sinning against God? If you are a sinner, according to the Christian faith, then why do you go to Hell and eternal fire and suffering, presided over by Satan with great delight? Why would Satan take delight in seeing those who follow his ways suffer for eternity? Wouldn't Satan, who supposedly opposes God, make Hell into a pleasurable afterlife, rewarding those who have followed the Devil's evil ways, rather than giving them everlasting damnation?

Why is the Devil doing God's work by punishing people for defying God and for following the Devil? If you do the Devil's bidding and do as he recommends, then why should the Devil then punish you for doing what he asks you to do, unless, of course, the Devil is a device invented in the Bible as an enforcer of God's will, and merely pretending to be an adversary of God?

What's Hell anyway but a cudgel for believers in God to use to warn people against sinning? In which case, the Devil would have nothing to do with such a Hell because he'd want people to take pleasure in crossing God and would make Hell a Heavenly place to be.

In which case, the Devil is not God's opposite at all, but his helpmate. Does Satan not know how to think at all? If he's so damn crafty and cunning, which the Bible says he is and preachers never tire of saying over and over again that he is, then you would think that he would notice - I mean, the guy's got eternal time to figure this out - that he's punishing people for doing precisely what he wants them to do - defy God and sinning right and left - and is therefore contradicting himself all of the time.

Everyone in the world knows, including in this country, that the US is the sole superpower.

What everyone does not know, most especially those in this country, is what exactly being a superpower entails.

The simplest way to put this - and the way that members of the pundit class have increasingly openly admitted in the last fifteen years or so - is that the US in an Empire.

This is explicitly admitted to and gladly embraced by both right wing and some of the liberal wing of the intelligentsia: people who appear in syndicated columns in places like the Washington Post, on MSNBC and Fox, and in books and magazines.

For instance:

“Being an imperial power, however, is more than being the most powerful nation or just the most hated one. It means enforcing such order as there is in the world and doing so in the American interest. It means laying down the rules America wants (on everything from markets to weapons of mass destruction) while exempting itself from other rules (the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the International Criminal Court) that go against its interest.”

– Michael Ignatieff, Director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, writing in The New York Times Magazine, “American Empire: Get Used to It,” January 6, 2003.

One comment that regularly comes up from at least some students during my sociology classes at some point is some variant on this statement: "It's human nature and that’s why we have social problems. People are naturally selfish, greedy and violent." This is something that you can hear someone in the street or other setting state very readily and with great assurance in their voices that what they're saying is as true as the sky is blue.

The follow-up statement to this is usually: "So any plans to change anything are bound to fail because of human nature."[1]

This is so common an idea and taken for granted as so well understood and true that nobody has to bother to try to justify it. Some teachers in fact can be heard in some classes engaging in what appears to be a routinized call and response with their students of: “And why can’t this problem be fixed class?” Chorus: “Because of human nature!” “That’s right,” the professor declares with great satisfaction.

In what has to be a completely unprecedented turn of events, Congressional Republicans are complaining that intelligence assessments of Islamic State's strength are being downplayed by the Obama Administration.

And intelligence analysts are feeling pressure to toe the official administration line that Islamic State is being degraded.

Someone needs to be fired, declares the press, citing an unnamed CIA Director under Obama.

It's been four months since I last posted an article here. I have had some health issues. What prompts me breaking my lengthy silence is an article that appears this month at the Harvard Political Review entitled "The Last Maoists of Cambridge." A month ago, the author, Gram Slattery, while preparing his article, approached me via email. He wanted to know why I was one of those who signed a statement in support of people engaging the works of Bob Avakian. This was a full page ad that ran in The New York Review of Books in 2008 entitled: "Dangerous times demand courageous voices. Bob Avakian is such a voice." It was signed by a very long list of academics, celebrities/artists such as Chuck D and film director David Zeiger, and California Poet Laureate Al Young. Slattery wanted to know why I put my name to that list. I was happy to answer his questions and did so via phone and email.

Author's note: Tonight is the Academy Awards and the film American Sniper is up for possible Oscars. It's remarkable that such a stupid film that celebrates an American soldier for killing scores of people in Iraq and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, could be so lauded. But then again, the fundamental lie that this film is based upon - that the US had and has a right to invade, occupy, and kill the people of Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 - mirrors the lie that was told to the nation by the Bush Regime and the mass media.

So even though that lie has been made public since the invasion (a lie that some of us tried to warn people about before the invasion, but mass media refused to give that information to the country), many people still can't think straight enough to realize that American Sniper is about a killer who deserves condemnation, not praise. All you would have to do to wake some of these impressionable people up, however, is to ask them a simple question: What the hell is the US doing in Iraq in the first place? How would you feel as an American if Iraq's army had invaded us fourteen years ago, after claiming that because we had weapons of mass destruction that we were a threat to them and that they had to invade and kill over a million Americans to prevent the "greater evil?" How would you feel if an Iraqi Sniper killed scores of Americans while occupying America who openly wished he had killed more American "savages"? Would you think this guy's story deserved an Academy Award? Or would you want to call him the Iraqi Psychopath? And what would you be doing towards the Iraqi invaders if they were the occupying and marauding foreign army in our streets?

In dishonor of tonight's expected touting of this war crime of a movie, I am reprinting an analysis that I posted on January 8, 2010 after the Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab unsuccessfully tried to blow up his boxer briefs on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Xmas Day, 2010. It brings up the truth about this big lie called the "war on terror" and how it actually creates anti-state terrorists such as ISIL.

In an Atlantic Magazine article entitled "The NYPD Officers Who See Racial Bias in the NYPD," dated January 7, 2015, and reposted by Yahoo.com here, the author Conor Friedersdorf quotes from a retired black police officer's testimony citing his superior's advice to him about minority suspects,

"They are fucking animals. You make sure if you have to shoot, you shoot them in the head. That way there’s one story."

People should remember this when they hear the "one story" told by police officers and vigilantes like George Zimmerman, relating their sole accounts of why they just had to shot to death their black or brown victims, making certain there are not surviving victims to tell a radically different story.

The Atlantic story goes on to cite another black officer's description of his superiors' attitudes, and much else, as well:

[I]n raids in black neighborhoods, his superiors “didn’t care if it was kids in there, they didn’t care if it was women in there, naked women... They treated them as if they had no rights whatsoever. It was disgusting." One can either credit these allegations, or believe that three [black] NYPD officers conspired to lie under oath.

John Yoo, principal author of the Office of Legal Counsel’s “Torture Memos” that gave the green light to the CIA and other governmental agencies to carry out torture under Bush, has this week surprisingly distanced himself from some of the torture techniques, saying on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show on December 11, 2014 that if the Senate’s Torture Report accounts are true, that the CIA was acting outside of the Justice Department’s authorization and could be prosecutable for that.

Yoo, as those who follow these things know, has been an unabashed proponent of torture and so his sudden discovery of the law and a conscience seems startling. He famously stated in a public debate on December 1, 2005, for example, that if POTUS ordered a boy’s testicles to be crushed in order to extract information from his father, that this would be acceptable if POTUS was doing it to protect the US. Yoo needs to explain how crushing a boy’s testicles is better than sodomy with hummus, keeping detainees awake for up to seven days (a sure technique for driving someone literally mad), putting people into coffin boxes for protracted periods of time, and waterboarding people until they are unconscious and had to be revived.

As ex-Representative Jane Harman, who sat on the House Homeland Security Committee and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, points out in the CNN broadcast with Yoo, the OLC and Yoo at the behest of the Bush White House, redefined torture to mean only if it caused “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or death,” so that the techniques employed that Yoo is now objecting to were still within the OLC/Yoo/Bush Regime’s own self-serving definition.

The first article of this series’ main point was that the unjust and murderous actions of officers such as Pantaleo and Wilson are not aberrations but in fact a logical outgrowth of, entirely consistent with, inspired by, and necessary corollaries to, US governmental policies, both here and abroad.

Consider the rationale for the so-called “war on terror” and the invasions and occupations of numerous countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The White House, through both the US military and various agencies such as the CIA and NSA, during the Bush years and the Obama years, has been and is still: carrying out torture, including of entirely innocent individuals, indefinite and preventive detention (e.g., Guantanamo, Bagram and other secret locations – aka “black sites”) where due process and the right to have your day in court have been explicitly suspended indefinitely, using anti-personnel weapons such as degraded radioactive warheads, cluster bombs, and free fire zones on densely populated civilian neighborhoods resulting not only in mass dislocations, deaths, and dismemberments but extraordinary increases in horrible birth defects, drone assassinations of thousands of overwhelmingly innocent “collateral” victims including hundreds of children, and massive surveillance upon whole countries.

All of these acts have been and are being carried out under the official rationale of “protecting American lives” by torturing and killing very large numbers of people. Well over a million Iraqis alone have died since our unjust and illegal invasion of their country based on a lie.

The immoral calculus for these actions? If it’s to save American lives, then anything is justified, even massive crimes routinely committed against innocents. The ends apparently justify the means.

This is the dilemma that those who run this political and economic system confront with the incredible popular upheaval in city after city, the likes of which I have never seen, even when comparing it to the 1960s:

If authorities were to do anything that would in any way cause the police to feel that they did not have complete license to constantly harass, brutalize, and kill, then this system could not continue.

Before examining this claim from different angles and justifying it, first an overall orientation:

The nature of economic and political power today under neoliberal regimes is so outrageously unfair, unjust, cold-blooded, deceitful, destructive, murderous, and belligerent, and becoming more so with every passing week, the only way to hold back the flood of outrage that has finally been unleashed against it is to continue to use repression on an even grander scale than that which unleashed this storm of resistance and disgust in the first place.

Ask yourself, why would the government blatantly uphold the obvious crime committed by Daniel Pantaleo who choked Eric Garner to death in front of the camera while Eric pleaded that he could not breathe over and over until he was suffocated? Pantaleo mugged for the camera that he knew was recording his murderous actions after he killed Garner and he and his fellow cops did nothing to try to revive Garner's lifeless body on the sidewalk.

Authorities certainly did not anticipate that they were opening the floodgates by issuing this non-indictment in the immediate aftermath of the fury and protest of so many to Ferguson. That is certain.

But they also could not afford to slap Pantaleo on the wrist because Pantaleo was doing exactly what the police have been training to do. To sanction Pantaleo is to make a mockery of what they have been directing and socializing their police force to do.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 19 Sep 2016 21:10:28 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-affinity-between-daniel-pantaleo-darren-wilson-and-us-foreign-and-domestic-policy.htmlObama and Building &quot;Trust&quot; with the Policehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/obama-and-building-trust-with-the-police.html
Obama and Building Trust with the Police

By Dennis Loo (12/3/14)

Obama says that we must build more trust between the community and the police.

In furtherance of that end I declare the following:

I trust that the police will do their best to harass and kill black (and brown) people whenever they see an opportunity.

So in spite of the fact that the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner did so with an illegal chokehold (by the NYPD's own standards) and despite the fact that the official coroner's report ruled Eric's death a "homicide," the grand jury has found no cause to indict Eric's murderer, Daniel Pantaleo. Grand juries are the instrument of prosecutors, so this decision is really the prosecutor's decision not to find any reason to try Pantaleo.

Can there be any more obvious case of someone who has been unjustly killed by a police officer? Can there be any more reason to indict an officer for murder? Eric Garner was subjected to Pantaleo's chokehold for the "crime" of selling cigarettes in the streets. Eric Garner's real crime in the eyes of this system, however, was the crime of being black. And hence, he could be murdered by those licensed killers who wear badges, without any consequences.

If we take Officer Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony and treat it as 100% true and that he really was so frightened and intimidated by unarmed 18 year-old Michael Brown that he just had to shoot him to death, then this must also mean:

you have an officer who, despite being specifically trained to handle difficult and at times violent incidents – precisely what a cop’s job is – is too afraid to do his job and is the last person who should be given a gun and a license to kill.

As a colleague of mine put it in making this point to me recently, this would be like her going into class and saying “I’m sorry, I just can’t give a lecture.” This is her job. Lecturing is one of the things we do as professors. Handling physical altercations and conflict is what cops are supposedly trained explicitly to do without always resorting to unnecessary or disproportionate, including lethal, force. If, as my colleague further went on to point out, Wilson was indeed being physically assaulted by Brown while in the driver's seat of his police car while the car was running, then all he had to do is step on the gas pedal.

This is, of course, a conclusion that you will hear from almost none of those who are commenting on this case in mainstream media. Instead, you will hear again and again that police officers are trained to use their guns to kill if they use them at all and that the presumption under the law in Missouri and in general is always if the police used deadly force that they must have felt threatened enough to kill.

Many years ago when a group of political activists (dubbed in the press the “Mao Zedong Defendants”) were arrested and put on trial for allegedly attacking a large group of police officers, I sat in the courtroom in Honolulu State Court on the defendants’ bench and listened with fascination at the parade of cops telling their version of the events of that day of our arrests.

I was fascinated by it because the cops’ accounts were a) all entirely consistent with each other, with not a single detail in any degree at variance or in contradiction to the others’ details (multiple eyewitness testimony is never entirely consistent when they're trying to tell the truth given the vagaries of individuals' observations and memories), and b) very vivid descriptions of how powerful my comrades were, two-thirds of them Asian females no taller than 5’ 1” tall and less than 100 pounds a piece, since according to these officers of the law, the officers had all been victims of a brutal assault by these Amazons.

To underscore how powerful and fierce my female activists must have been, the cops were to a man, at least 6' tall and weighed no less than 200 pounds a piece. It must be the intense study sessions of revolutionary science that my fellow activists spent so much time on because they had behemoth-like powers against these poor, defenseless officers of the law.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 26 Nov 2014 19:35:11 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Police-Repression/the-world-according-to-officer-darren-wilson.htmlThe Right to Protest: Ferguson and Beyondhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Police-Repression/the-right-to-protest-ferguson-and-beyond.html
The Right to Protest: Ferguson and Beyond

By Dennis Loo (11/21/14)

Some people find it unremarkable that Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has called out the National Guard, declaring a state of emergeny, prior to a grand jury's decision about whether or not to indict officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. As I previously noted, this pre-emptive move by Nixon, by St. Louis Mayor James Knowles III, and by the FBI, to intimidate and suppress any prospective demonstrations, is based upon their clear expectations that the grand jury's verdict will be to exonerate Wilson's shooting Brown to death.

I find it remarkable that some people don't find the calling out of the National Guard to be outrageous. Their view points to a) an inadequate understanding of what civil liberties are, and b) a faulty understanding of what is in play in Ferguson.

Upon hearing that Missouri's governor Jay Nixon has today called upon the National Guard, declaring a state of emergency for Ferguson and St. Louis, even before the grand jury issues its findings on whether or not to indict officer Darren Wilson for shooting Michael Brown, do you think to yourself:

a) the governor has no idea what the grand jury will say and just wants to be careful to protect people's constitutional rights to speech and assembly,

b) the governor knows that the grand jury will not indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown and he plans to violently suppress the inevitable protest, or

c) this announcement just reinforces my faith that the criminal justice system is fair and impartial?

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 25 Nov 2014 19:23:43 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Police-Repression/ferguson-missouri-gov-declares-a-state-of-emergency-before-the-grand-jury-rules.htmlDo Fetuses Have More Rights Than Women?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/do-fetuses-have-more-rights-than-women.html
Do Fetuses Have More Rights Than Women?

By Dennis Loo (11/9/14)

The following excerpt is from a NYT Op-Ed entitled "Pregnant, and No Civil Rights" by Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin, published on November 7, 2014. The examples they cite, of which these are just a part, are shocking. The authors further point out that these examples are not rare or isolated cases:

Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill 27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her baby survived.

In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.”

In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Sunday, November 1, 2014, issued its starkest warning to date. As the NYT described it today:

Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.

Global warming is not something down the road. It's something happening now. Tens of thousands of people have died, as one indicator of this. Mass species extinctions are happening, for another. The ocean is acidifying and in danger of being unable to sustain life within a mere few decades, for a third. And we need not even go beyond the third to recognize the magnitude of this catastrophe happening as we speak and as we (still) live and breathe.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 25 Nov 2014 19:24:19 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Climate-Change/un-panel-s-dramatic-warning-on-global-warming.htmlFrom San Quentin to Guantanamo: the New Carceral Statehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Police-Repression/from-san-quentin-to-guantanamo-the-new-carceral-state.html
From San Quentin to Guantanamo: the New Carceral State

By Dennis Loo (10/22/14)

This is a transcript of Dennis Loo’s prepared remarks at a Cal Poly Pomona Symposium on Stop Mass Incarceration, Police Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation on the evening of October 21, 2014.

Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, recounts at the beginning of her book that when she first began working as a civil rights attorney over a decade ago, the prevailing view was that the battle for civil rights had essentially been won and that the main battlefront in defending those gains was in affirmative action cases and so on, a view that matched her own attitude at the time.

One day she spotted a flyer stuck on a post that said in big letters: “The Drug War is the New Jim Crow.” Her response at the time was that this was a gross overstatement that would turn people off who would think that it was “crazy.” It took her years, even after leaving her work at the ACLU, to realize that the criminalization of millions of people of color was going on right in front of her nose and that the slogan was not an exaggeration at all. The Drug War was indeed the New Jim Crow, a way of rendering black and brown people to a permanent second-class caste status, robbed of their rights, deprived of any housing assistance, the right to vote and serve on a jury, condemned to filling out job apps that asked the inevitable question that ruled you out of employment “have you ever been convicted of a felony?” all without being blatantly racist.

Two health workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital where Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan was treated and died from Ebola have now tested positive for Ebola. Hospital spokespeople expressed astonishment that first nurse Nina Pham and now a so-far unidentified health care worker contracted Ebola, despite wearing facemasks, gowns, gloves, et al, as per their supervisors’ instructions and CDC protocols.

When Pham came down with Ebola, officials initially blamed her for not following proper procedures. A strikingly similar sequence of events has occurred in Spain, with two nurses coming down with Ebola who were following the instructions they were given, with government spokesmen initially blaming the nurses - and then in response to angry protest, retracting their pompous blaming - for the nurses' contracting the disease.

As this article (“Health workers need optimal respiratory protection for Ebola”) by national respiratory protection and infectious disease experts Lisa Brosseau, SCD, and Rachael Jones, PhD, published in the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy on September 17, 2014, makes clear, however, Ebola can be transmitted through facemasks by being aerosolized through coughing, sneezing, or even, we should assume, breathing by an infected person.

A white off duty St. Louis cop gunned down Vonderrit Myers Jr., an 18-year-old Black man, last night. One day short of 2 months after the police murder of Michael Brown, another Black life is stolen. THESE POLICE MURDERS MUST STOP, and it's up to us to stop them.

The police say that Myers and several friends ran when the off duty cop tried to make “a pedestrian stop” on them and that Myers shot at the cop first. So, according to them, the 17 shots the cop fired were in self-defense. Witnesses to the incident say Myers was unarmed, that he had just bought a sandwich and that’s all he had in his hands when he was chased and gunned down. People gathered at the scene of the murder to protest it within minutes and soon the crowd had grown to several hundred angry people. A resident whose son had been with Myers on Wednesday night said, "They have been harassing him all day like they do all the time, pulling him over, stopping him." "That's how it is. They harass the kids in the neighborhood. Our kids walk around in their own neighborhood and get harassed for it." This is the reality of life in this country for Black people. It has become a daily fact of life that Black youth have to fear for their lives, and face the danger of summary execution by police at any time, for doing anything, or nothing.

Why does an off-duty cop feel like he can be making “pedestrian stops” of Black youth while he's moonlighting as a security guard? This killing and the story the police are using to justify it reflect how Black people are criminalized in this society. Some Black youth walking together are suspicious and need to be jacked up by a cop, even if the cop is off duty. This is like the Black Codes that southern states, including Missouri, enforced during the days of slavery which gave whites the power to break up any gatherings of 3 or more Black people. And it brings to mind the 1857 Dred Scott decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which said that Black people had no rights that white people are bound to respect.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 14 Oct 2014 05:49:00 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Police-Repression/st-louis-cop-kills-another-black-youth.htmlISIS: An Evil So Great We Dare Not Understand It?http://www.dennisloo.com/ISIS/isis-an-evil-so-great-we-dare-not-understand-it.html
ISIS: An Evil So Great We Dare Not Understand It?

Comparisons are meaningless at this level of evil, as are attempts to explain the horror by delving into the psychology or rationale of the perpetrators. Even to call what this group does “crimes against humanity” is to put a legalistic spin on raw evil; as Roger Cohen, the New York Times columnist, wrote in a recent piece about ISIS, there is no “why” in the heart of darkness.

ISIS surely is horrid.

However, to throw up one’s hands and claim that trying to understand what’s generating such a group’s horrors is impossible to do, and to claim that calling their acts “crimes against humanity” is to put a “legalistic spin on raw evil,” is a form of raw stupidity.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sat, 11 Oct 2014 05:37:40 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/ISIS/isis-an-evil-so-great-we-dare-not-understand-it.htmlOctober is the Month of Resistance to Mass Incarcerationhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/october-is-the-month-of-resistance-to-mass-incarceration.html
October is the Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Repression, and the Criminalization of a Whole Generation

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 03 Oct 2014 14:21:54 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/ISIS/surprise-surprise-isis-and-the-us.htmlBombing ISIS to Destroy It Is Like Drowning a Fire With Gasolinehttp://www.dennisloo.com/ISIS/bombing-isis-to-destroy-it-is-like-drowning-a-fire-with-gasoline.html
Bombing ISIS to Destroy It Is Like Drowning a Fire With Gasoline

By Dennis Loo (9/29/14)

Something has to be done about ISIS.

If we want to do something about ISIS, then we need to ask ourselves what is causing ISIS in the first place. Otherwise we’re acting out of fear and ignorance, never a recipe for good results. If you attack a disease without knowing what’s causing it, then you could – and in this case will - accelerate rather than curb the disease. As virulent as ISIS is, it will grow under the US air strikes the way that a fire rises ever higher and hotter if you try to drown it by pouring gasoline on it.

The Islamic State jihadist organization has recruited more than 6,000 new fighters since America began targeting the group with air strikes last month, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

ISIS and al-Qaeda are the bitter fruit of the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. They are US policies coming home to roost in spectacular fashion. What Obama is doing in ordering relentless airstrikes in Syria and Iraq is fueling ISIS, not damaging it.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the US government's claims are true that its airstrikes on Syria killed eight leaders of the Khorasan Group, an al-Qaeda offshoot, thus foiling an "imminent attack” on the US homeland.

Consider the facts and logic of this claim.

Even if a) Khorasan was in fact planning an “imminent” attack and b) their key leaders were killed, exactly how did this decapitation stop that “imminent” attack (and especially, future ones)?

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 03 Oct 2014 14:23:04 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/ISIS/syrian-airstrikes-and-the-khorasan-group.htmlWhat the Climate March Did and Didn’t Dohttp://www.dennisloo.com/Climate-Change/what-the-climate-march-did-and-didn-t-do.html
What the Climate March Did and Didn't Do

By Dennis Loo (9/24/14)

The tremendous outpouring in NYC on Sunday (and it should be added, perhaps more importantly, at Wall Street on Monday (#FloodWallStreet)) over the global climate emergency has some commentators on the Left convinced that the grassroots will now be able to solve the ever-spreading climate catastrophe.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 03 Oct 2014 14:23:26 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Climate-Change/what-the-climate-march-did-and-didn-t-do.html“Who Are You to Say?”http://www.dennisloo.com/Climate-Change/who-are-you-to-say.html
“Who Are You to Say?”

By Dennis Loo (9/22/14)

Part 2 added late 9/22/14 and 9/23/14

This question - “who are you to say?” - gets posed, either explicitly or implicitly, fairly frequently by at least some, if not many, people in retort to those who seek to lead others in political change. “I have my own views. Who are you to say what’s right or wrong? I will do my thing and you do your thing. It’s all good.”

In the US where individualism and “personal choice” are highly valued by the dominant (mass) culture, the idea that anyone would challenge the notion that everyone’s opinions are all equally valid – or at least, depending upon what company you keep, the views that are most common among your chosen political persuasion - strikes many people as at best rude and at worst the views of someone you should avoid.

Who are you to say that evolution is true? Who are you to say that intelligent design is hogwash? Who are you to say that climate change is a dire emergency and not a hoax or an exaggerated response to “adverse” weather? Who are you to say that voting is worse than a waste of time? Who are you to say that your views are scientific/right/true and that (some) others’ views are not?

Since Earth’s creation, no natural threats to its existence compare to the danger that it now faces from climate change, caused by human activity.

Gigantic meteors have struck the earth and volcanoes have spewed out enormous amounts of smoke and ash that dramatically altered the landscape and deeply impacted the flora and fauna, and perhaps caused the massive die off of dinosaurs … but they are not as grave a threat to the existence of Earth now confronting us.

Nuclear winter, a threat during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union that could have been catastrophic had it happened, is arguably less of a threat than climate change.

It is still hard to believethat millions of us saw Eric Garner die.He died with what looked like a half dozen heavily cladpolicemenstanding on his body, twisting and crushinghimespecially his headand neck.He was a big man, too. They must have feltlike clumsy midgetsas they dragged him down.

I am going to make this very short because I have previously written on this case extensively, both in articles and in the comments threads, especially in the thread after my first article on this.

The judge has ruled that Pistorius committed "culpable homicide" and that he did not know that he was shooting his girlfriend as he was doing it. Thus, he has been exonerated from the murder charge.

For Judge Thokozile Masipa to find that Pistorius did not know that he was shooting Reeva Steenkamp to death requires that the judge overlook not only all the very damning testimony and evidence presented, not only Pistorius' ever-changing, contradictory, and self-convicting affidavit and testimony, including his absurd claim that he did not check to see if Reeva was in the bed before he got up to see about the "intruder," she must specifically overlook the fact that Reeva was screaming - so loudly that neighbors heard it - continuously while Oscar proceeded to shoot her four times.

US policies, and more specifically, its "War on Terror," created ISIS. Obama now proposes to destroy that which US policy created by using the same fundamental logic that produced ISIS and that guides the "war on terror." This can only produce a more virulent and widespread response, even more dramatic blowback than 9/11.

I say this not because the US government set out to create ISIS and had a hand via covert intel in bringing it into being. It's not that simple. ISIS (or ISIL), however, did come about as an offshoot of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda in turn was created by the US's policies in Afghanistan when the Russians were occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s. The initial form of al-Qaeda was the mujahideen, which the US government funded and supported, as a counter to the Russian occupation. The mujahideen became al-Qaeda subsequently as a form of "blowback" when the US abandoned them when the specific goal of the Russians leaving Afghanistan was achieved, and when more importantly, the US continued to occupy the holy land of Saudi Arabia (Mecca and Medina) with troops, prop up widely despised dictators in the Arab world, and support Israel in its policies aimed at annihilating the Palestinian people.

Grave crimes and injustices produce two kinds of responses from those victimized by those crimes.

On the one hand, it sensitizes people to oppression and makes many of them more likely to oppose oppression.

On the other hand, some victims or witnesses to oppression identify with the oppressors rather than with the oppressed.

In this second case, victims to injustice seek to avoid being oppressed ever again by becoming oppressors themselves: “Better to be the oppressor than be one of the oppressed,” they think.

Prisons, for example, contain a group of people referred to as “trustees” who are prisoners who help the guards police and patrol the prisoners, without which the guards would need far more guards to control the prison population. In the Nazi concentration camps there were Jews who, in exchange for temporarily at least being saved from execution, facilitated in their fellow camp residents being sent to their deaths. When the Japanese imperialists invaded China in the 1930s there were some Chinese who sided with the Japanese invaders and sold out their own people. The list goes on and on. There will ever and always be people who will exchange solidarity for personal comfort, even if that comfort at times is triflingly small.

History and life experience, in other words, teach us that within any group of people there are always going to be at least a few who are willing, in exchange for better treatment for themselves, to sell out their people.

Contrary to much of the media coverage of Ferguson, the issue here isn't whether the protests are "peaceful" or not. The issue is whether or not the police will be allowed to continue to get away with cold bloodedly executing black people (and others). That is the question.

"You're not going to talk to me that way!" -- Michael Dunn, before he fired ten shots at five black teens, killing Jordan Davis, while Davis and his friends sat in their car at a gas station.

“These assholes. They always get away.” – George Zimmerman, before executing Trayvon Martin

These are the words of arrogant racists who think – no, know – that the whole edifice of racism backs them up. These are the words of racist pigs who know that they can get away with murdering those treated as no better than dirt by the police and by the justice system.

A CALL TO ACTION: COME TO FERGUSON THIS WEEKEND!

If the police murder of Michael Brown, and now the second assassination of his character in the media, is just too much for you to take…

If the illegitimate police state response to the protests infuriates and alarms you and you don’t want to just accept this as “the way it is”…

If you are inspired that those who have been demonized and despised for years have now stood up and begun to raise their sights, and along with many, many people from all walks of life, have courageously stood their ground…

If you want a world without the endless chain of murders of Black and Brown youth by a system which has no place, no future for them…

On Tuesday in Ferguson, MO, about four miles from where Michael Brown was executed by St. Louis' finest, another black man, Kajieme Powell, was similarly gunned down and killed by police fire.

In response to the attention and furor the Brown killing has sparked, police released a cell phone video of the Powell murder on Wednesday, in the name of "transparency."

The problem for the police is that even their own released cell phone video contradicts their official story of their "justifiable homicide."

Instead of Powell supposedly moving towards the cops and "three to four feet away" with a knife raised "overhand" threatening the cops, thus justifying lethal force in self-defense, Powell was brandishing no knife, was further away than the "three or four feet," and had his hands at his sides. He was not, as anyone can see from the video(s), threatening to harm the police. Instead, he responded when the officers came out of their squad car with their guns already in hand with "Shoot me already."

“There are no 'outsiders' in the struggle for justice and liberation,” said Carl Dix on his release from St. Louis County Jail this morning.

“The criminal actions in Ferguson come from the police who brutalize and murder people, not from people who have stood up and refused to accept that subjugation, or from people like myself who came from other cities to support them.”

Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was shot at least six times, all of which he could have survived, including the terrible bullet to his eye, save for the likely final fatal wound, a shot through his skull originating from the top of his head penetrating down to his chin. This final kill shot is consistent with witnesses’ accounts that Brown was trying to surrender when he was murdered in cold blood.

Hardly a week goes by in the US where we learn of yet another police killing of an unarmed, non-threatening, complying black, brown and/or homeless person. Sometimes it's a chokehold (as in Eric Garner less than a month ago in NY), more often it's from being shot down, multiple times. In virtually every instance, the cops responsible for these official murders concoct tall tales to justify their killing unarmed civilians who pose no danger to anyone and who were acting entirely legally when stopped and killed.

In LA on Monday, August 10, police shot and killed Ezel Ford, a 24-year old black man with mental illness well-known to the police. In accounting for their assassination of Ford, in which they shot him in the back three times while he was lying face down at 65th and Broadway, a police spokesman stated that Ford "spun and tucked his head toward the officer's gun and basically tackled him to the ground, trying to grab at the weapon."

Yesterday Obama admitted that the US government “tortured some folks.” Obama’s comments are sparking alarm among reactionaries and praise from liberals that he’s admitted what virtually the whole world already knows.

As Amanda Carpenter, Ted Cruz’s speechwriter, for example, tweeted:

I am stunned our President just said "we tortured" people from the podium. This is a PR victory for our enemies. Make it stop. Make it stop.

All these and more outrages only serve to underscore more than ever that we need to unleash powerful outpourings of resistance in October 2014 - as envisioned in the Call for a Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation (www.stopmassinceration.net) that was adopted at the meeting convened in New York in April 2014.

Already those of us who have been working very hard to realize this vision have accomplished important steps: the Call has been taken out all over the country and new forces continue to sign on and lend their voices to it; plans are being made in many cities for protests and different ways of expressing their outrage and determination to put an end to mass incarceration; clergy and lay people have been active taking the Call to many other religious institutions to play a role in October. But now we need to take things to a much higher level to succeed in making October 2014 a month that marks "the beginning of the end for mass incarceration in the US." These meetings, to be held in as many U.S. cities as possible, are the key link in doing that. Already, hundreds have participated in October 2014 kick off meetings in such cities as Dayton, Ohio and Dallas, TX.

Who needs to be at this meeting? Everyone who has already signed up to be part of these efforts... those whose lives are most directly affected... students, the concerned religious community, prominent voices of conscience... all kinds of organizations who are outraged about the fact that so many people have been criminalized and locked up... and many others who are just learning about this and don't want to live in a country where millions are being treated this way. While there are different understandings of why this is happening and what should be done about it, we need to unite all those who agree that this must end to act together in October 2014. At this meeting we should hear from many voices who c an bring to life what it means that this country has millions locked up in its jails, prisons, and detention centers; how people's lives are being destroyed by police terror; and how whole sections of young people are being treated as suspects and targets to be killed or locked up. And we should hear from others who find this outrageous and want it to end! We will concretize plans for a big demonstration in Los Angeles on October 22, with cities all across the country, as one part of a making October as powerful as possible. And chart out how on college campuses, in the faith community, in the neighborhoods, in the culture and art scene, October must be a month that makes clear thousands and thousands are willing to stand up and speak out today to awaken and rally forth millions. We should invite one and all via email, Twitter, phone calls, Internet postings, ads and PSA'S. This meeting needs to get everyone's ideas on how to make October a powerful Month of Resistance in a way that the whole country has to know about, and get people organized to do that.

July 27, Sunday, 10 am- Join a team at the Hollywood Farmers Market to reach out with Revolutionnewspaper and to introduce people to the bookstore. Meet at Revolution Books at 9 am or at the crossroad of the Farmers Market (Ivar & Selma) at 10 am.- Or join a team going to talk to families of prisoners at the LA County Jailfrom 12 noon to 2 pm. Meet at Revolution Books at 11 am or meet at Vignes and Bauchet Street at the jail at 12 noon. Call 213.304-9864 for more info.- Central Avenue Jazz Festival. Contact Revolution Books for booth details.

July 29, Tuesday, 7 pmRevolution Books volunteer meeting. As the world burns in more ways than one, join the fight to save and grow this bookstore as the center for fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution!

July 30, Wednesday, 5 pmViewing of first Abortion Rights Freedom Ride live webcast from Texas. Followed by meeting to further plan the upcoming Break ALL the Chains celebration. For more info:(213) 304-9864 or baeverywhere_LA1@yahoo.com.

August 1, Friday, 8 pmGroup excursion to see The Brothers Size at the Fountain Theatre. Fundraiser for Revolution Books. Contact the bookstore for tickets.

Donate now to enable Revolution Books to stay alive and continue to play the invaluable role that is needed for a radically different world. The future depends on YOU.

Donate on-line here or send a check and share with us why you are making this contribution.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 01 Aug 2014 19:40:53 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/october-month-of-resistance-to-mass-incarceration.htmlStop the Crimes Against Our Planet; Humanity and the Planet Must Come Firsthttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/stop-the-crimes-against-our-planet-humanity-and-the-planet-must-come-first.html
Stop the Crimes Against Our PlanetHumanity and the Planet Must Come FirstThe World Can't Wait!

(8/1/14)

World leaders have called for yet another International Conference at theUN in September. Their meeting will, however, do nothing to stop theglobal environment's escalating destruction. Using the justifications of“national security” and "business necessities," the US government itselfhas consistently sabotaged climate talks, supported dangerous drilling,fracking, plunder and exploitation of non-renewable energy resources hereand around the world. It has also ruthlessly prosecuted and jailedenvironmental and animal rights activists explicitly as “terrorists.”

Only the direct action of thousands and eventually millions of people cancreate a movement that will stem nature's systemic abuse and its direconsequences for the planet. Politics as usual has not and will notreverse this disastrous direction. As World Can't Wait's Mission Statementwarns: "That which we do not resist and mobilize to stop, we will learn -or be forced - to accept."

Whether it was the commencement speech given during my high school graduation last summer or comments made to me by adults throughout my first year of college, I have heard time and time again about how much “hope” adults have for our generation. But while adults seem to think that millennials are universally progressive, the terrible truth is that there is still a backwards, women-hating ideology and political program firmly in place in this day and age that jeopardizes every inch of progress past feminists have made towards liberation. Our generation can’t be complacent, but must fight to not only maintain but also actually ensure and expand the rights that women have already been demanding for years. We need all generations working together to ensure the safety and freedom of every little girl to dream of whatever future she wants, no matter who she is or where she comes from.

The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place “entire categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted (Emphasis added).

In other words, contrary to Obama et al's public statements assuring everyone that they are carefully scrutinizing who makes it onto their terrorist watchlists based on reasonable suspicion so that innocent individuals and groups are not unfairly being targeted, the government's until now secret guidelines for designating someone as a suspected terrorist make it clear that they do not need any evidence to place you onto their terrorist list.

A military medical professional at Guantanamo Bay recently refused to force-feed detainees after witnessing the suffering it caused detainees, it has been revealed.

The incident is thought to be the first case of 'conscientious objection' to force-feeding at Guantánamo since a mass hunger-strike began at the prison last year. Cleared Syrian Abu Wa’el Dhiab related the news on a phone call last week with his Reprieve lawyer, Cori Crider. Dhiab explained that a military nurse recently told him he would no longer participate in force-feedings, saying: “I have come to the decision that I refuse to participate in this criminal act.”

A Department of Defense spokesperson confirmed the basics of this account in an email to Miami Herald journalist Carol Rosenberg. The Spokesman wrote: “There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee.” The nurse in question has apparently been assigned elsewhere; Mr. Dhiab said that after the man made his decision known, he never saw him again.

The selection of John Yoo to fill an endowed faculty chair at Boalt Hall has raised righteous indignation across the board, from academics to un-credentialed people of conscience. The appointment represents a huge leap in institutional complicity in war crimes. Where neglect in enforcement of ethical conduct was excused by platitudes of powerlessness from the former dean, the current administration (new Dean, new Chancellor) appears to embrace the politics of exceptionalism: that international law may be selectively employed. Indeed, promotion of John Yoo's hyperbole has helped to normalize illegal government policy on what might be better labelled a "war of terror."

"..knowingly targeting civilians because they happen to be in the vicinity of an often unidentified suspect presumed to commit some future harm comes dangerously close to the strategy employed by al-Qaeda." -- John Glaser

--

Afternote

By Dennis Loo (7/5/14)

For those who have any familiarity with John Yoo's legal memos, frequent OpEds at major newspapers such as the NYT, and public comments, it must come as a shock that this exceedingly shoddy legal mind and what is even more important, open advocate of torture, a war crime of the first order, should be not only not prosecuted or at the very least, fired as a law professor (since law professors are mentors to other incipient lawyers), but that he should be promoted and honored. The endowed faculty chair that he has been given is Boalt Hall's oldest chair.

]]>
ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 06 Jul 2014 14:06:09 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/uc-berkeley-honors-terrorist-john-yoo.htmlIraq: the Chickens Are Coming Home to Roosthttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/iraq-the-chickens-coming-home-to-roost.html
Iraq: the Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

By Dennis Loo (6/28/14)

Dennis Trainor, Jr. of Acronym TV, interviewed me recently about the situation in Iraq. See this link that posted today:

As President Obama weighs airstrikes against marauding militants in Iraq, he has concluded that any American military action must be conditioned on a political plan to try to heal Iraq’s sectarian rifts, a senior administration official said on Sunday.

While Mr. Obama has ordered unmanned surveillance flights over Iraq to gather intelligence for possible strikes on militant positions, the official said, the White House’s emphasis, when Mr. Obama returns to Washington on Monday from a weekend in Southern California, will be on prodding Iraq’s leaders to form a new national unity government.

The United States, this official said, has asked Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, to work with the Kurds, to seek to persuade the disaffected Sunni minority that the next government will be an “ally not an adversary” and to overhaul Iraq’s routed army. All three groups must be adequately represented in Baghdad, he said.

Obama, in other words, is trying to persuade the people who he is planning to bomb, the Sunni jihadists of ISIL, that they should accept the status of “ally not … adversary” and not violently seek to overthrow the al-Maliki Shiite government … by bombing them if they do not operate non-violently.

How do you get someone - in this case the Sunnis - to cooperate rather than fight when they have been systematically persecuted by the Shiite al-Maliki regime? How do you expect the Sunnis to agree to participate in a "national unity government" if they are being bombed by those who they are supposed to come together in unity with?

I am sure that after Obama’s prior spectacularly unsuccessful efforts at getting al-Maliki to embrace, rather than exclude Sunnis, the caliphate dreams driven ISIL (aka ISIS) will have faith that Obama can do what he has previously been unable to do.

The US government is caught between Iraq and a hard place. The sectarian violence that has escalated dramatically, with the ISIL taking Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and now setting its sights on Baghdad, was both provoked and spectacularly intensified by the US invasion and occupation.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 17 Jun 2014 13:46:20 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/iraq-diplomatic-solutions-and-brute-violence.htmlIraq: A Point of Orientationhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/iraq-a-point-of-orientation.html
Iraq: A Point of Orientation

By Dennis Loo (6/14/14)

The situation in Iraq is rapidly evolving but the overriding point to keep in mind is this: the US' invasions under both Bushes and the continued occupations under Democrats, both Bill Clinton and Obama, have spawned the sectarian fighting and truly massive suffering in Iraq. Now Obama is trying to drum up support for escalating the US's war on the Iraqi people in response to the violence that the US's invasion and occupation have themselves caused.

As empires will do because it's in the nature of empires to do this, they are convinced that through sheer force and gigantic inputs of resources, they can impose their will on other countries, regions, and peoples. This is a blind spot that imperialists cannot avoid because it's an outgrowth of being an empire in the first place. Empires do not become empires through winning popularity contests but by proving themselves willing to commit atrocities on a grand scale as a means to try to squelch any opposition to them.

There's a basketball saying that "good defense wins games and great defense wins championships." In the 2014 NBA Finals, the saying applies but in a reverse sense. It's not that the Spurs' defense is so great. In fact, Coach Popovich has complained openly about his team's defense. It's that his Spurs' offense is moving the ball so rapidly that the Heat's normally championship-level defense cannot make adjustments quickly enough to be where the ball is.

Watching Game 3 of the series in which the Spurs set a first half team shooting percentage record of nearly 80% was like viewing an advanced clinic in team passing and play, with the time between passes sometimes only as long as a touch pass. When asked in an after-game interview on ESPN about what the single most important factor in their Game 3 rout was (the reporter didn't put it quite that elegantly), Tim Duncan replied "team play." Which is absolutely true. But the most precise answer to the question would have been "time between passes." I have never seen a team pass the ball around to each other so unselfishly and so quickly. There is always an issue in sports (and warfare for that matter) because the amount of territory that the defense can cover is less than what the offense could potentially exploit.[1] Offense has the distinct advantage of taking the initiative and defense always has to react after the fact to what the offense is doing.

If the dominant ideas of our times preach that individualism and selfishness are the truest nature of humans, then it only stands to reason that altruism should be derided as non-existent. Quite a few people argue that even those acts that many would consider altruistic are in fact not because those who perform acts on behalf of others derive personal benefit from it. Since it makes people feel good who do things on behalf of others, they are not truly altruistic because if they were, they would not expect anything in return, including feeling any personal pleasure in making personal sacrifices for others.

If we look at what it is that makes sociology a science, however, and we take that fundamental principle of sociology (and anthropology) seriously and fully consistently, then we would have to argue against those who assert that altruism is fictive. If social life requires mutual interdependence for society to be even possible, and if humanity could not exist absent group life, then reciprocity is an indispensable ground rule for social existence.

Imagine a society in which no one ever thanked someone else for assisting them in any way (such as holding a door open for them when they’re carrying groceries in both hands). Imagine a world in which some version of “please” was non-existent. Imagine a society in which “being polite” had no meaning and everyone did only that which served their own narrow personal interest and if anyone occasionally did something on behalf of someone else it was never ever acknowledged with a smile or thank you or pat on the back or kiss on the cheek. Is that a world that you would want to live in? Could such a world even exist at all?

The so-called "bystander effect" is typically offered as an illustration of humanity's shortcomings: a crowd of people fail to act to prevent or mitigate a tragedy such as someone being viciously assaulted. Frequently among laypeople the bystander effect is brought up to condemn humans as sheeplike, cowardly and/or callous.

The most famous case cited to illustrate this is the 1964 Kitty Genovese incident in Queens, New York where Genovese was murdered in front of hundreds of her neighbors in a housing project. There is also a recent incident in China involving a two-year old child run over by two cars before someone went to her assistance.

I am going to offer here an alternative view of the bystander effect from the customary one.

Those who argue that selfishness is the most authentic human trait need to account for something: How is it possible for society to exist if most people in society behave selfishly? If most individuals are self-centered and are therefore engaging in anti-social behavior - i.e., they treat their own individual interest above those of the group and those around them - then how can society, which requires for its very existence that people cooperate in a network of mutual interdependence, even exist?

It's true that selfishness and self-centeredness exist in varying degrees within societies outside of tribal societies. It's particularly pronounced in capitalist societies where individualism and the pursuit of material wealth are emphasized. But even in capitalist America where these traits are the most encouraged and lauded, if it were really true that people were in fact primarily selfish and greedy, workers could not work together. Teaching and mentorship more generally - which depends essentially on giving to others - would not exist. Children would not be nurtured and raised by their parents because to be a parent means that you have to sacrifice a great deal of your time, energy, and resources to support your children. People would get into car accidents constantly because they would not abide by the rules of the road and would not exercise any courtesy to others on the road. The collusion that goes on between oligopolistic sectors of the economy (e.g., between and among cable companies, oil companies, airline companies, etc.) who agree not to undercut each others' prices so that they can all charge more for their services, would not exist. In other words, even the sector most marked by ruthless competition demonstrates at least some marked signs of cooperation. Sporting contests could not happen because in order to compete in sporting competitions, the competitors must cooperate in the form of agreeing to abide by those rules and to meet at a certain field of competition at agreed upon times, to respect the decisions of referees, and so on. Groups such as couples could not exist because there are frequent differences between individuals in couples over what they want to do or how something should be handled, and if they were not at bottom cooperating in spite of those inevitable differences, then their being in a relationship with each other would have to end.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 03 Nov 2014 00:31:38 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/can-anti-social-behavior-form-the-foundation-for-societies.html“I’ll Do the Right Thing If You Others Do It First”http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/i-ll-do-the-right-thing-if-you-others-do-it-first.html
“I’ll Do the Right Thing If You Others Do It First”

By Dennis Loo (6/2/14)

My title paraphrases common complaints by those who say that the problem is other people. The problem, you see, isn’t those who articulate those sentiments. No, the problem is all those other people.

Now if we could just get those scared or ignorant ones to do the right thing without having the more aware and braver ones first take the lead, everything will be right with the world!

Awareness, you see, doesn’t bring any greater responsibilities to those who are aware. It just gives them more of a right to complain about the fact that the unaware are unaware.

The solution to the world’s problems is for the mainstream to lead. What the world needs now is for those who don’t know as much about what’s going on to act on what they don’t know.

The mass murder carried out on May 23 in Santa Barbara by a young man who professed profound hatred of women—and who released a manifesto which revealed years of cultivated resentment, score-keeping against women for living lives that did not reduce to sexually servicing him, “loving” him, and hanging on his arm in a way that elevated his “status” as a man—poses these questions:

How long must women live with the fear of violence at the hands of men who are trained by society to hate them, to feel entitled to their bodies, to view women not as human but as things who exist to sexually and emotionally service them or bear their children?

How long will young women in “the West” face the likelihood of rape while in college while girls in Nigeria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere face the terror of death, abduction, or acid-attacks simply for going to school?

Conventional wisdom holds that individuals are not affected by the systems they live in and that society instead takes on its character wholly because of the individuals within it. Those who see things this way almost invariably also say things like the following:

“Things never change,”

“People are sheep (or stupid, or in denial),” and

“People are naturally selfish and greedy.”

This presents us with a strange paradox.

According to the common view, individuals are in charge and free to change things, but we don’t or can’t change things because human nature is unalterable.

In other words, we’re free but we’re not free because we’re enslaved to our unchanging “human nature.”

Let me offer an alternative view to this intellectual cul-de-sac:

The world is not static but always in motion. Change is going on all of the time. If you use a way of thinking that doesn’t account for motion and development (e.g., static views that species were as they have always been versus the revolution of Evolutionary Theory), then you are going to be unable to see the underlying and hidden dynamics beneath the surface. You are going to only see what appears to be happening right now. You are going to miss the momentum and trajectory of things.

Either/Or thinking (aka Dichotomous Reasoning) sees society as either a product of the total dominance of individuals or the reverse of this, the total dominance of systems with no role at all for individual choices. The “system” that people believe in who say they don’t believe in systems is therefore “unchanging human nature.”

In contrast to this prevalent view, the two sciences entirely devoted to the study of human societies both reject the idea of “unchanging human nature.” Both sociology and anthropology are sciences precisely because they are based on recognizing systems’ centrality and how systems profoundly shape human behavior, even as individuals within systems retain scope for their actions.

What, then, is the correct relationship between individuals and systems?

Dialectics tell us that at any point in time there is a principle aspect and a secondary aspect to any phenomenon or thing. It is not either/or; it is mainly this and secondarily that. For example, systems are mainly why most people behave as they do (since systems lay out what the paths of least resistance are) but there is variability among individuals in those systems and what they do in subgroups or as individuals can vary from the paths of least resistance within those systems.

Change within systems can only happen by systems being replaced with a different system. Systems don’t change because individuals in them suddenly decide that they are going to do something differently. Systems change when a conscious effort led by some individuals launch and lead a social movement to overthrow the existing system and succeed in replacing it with a different system. I’m not talking here of merely changing the faces and the names. I’m talking here about smashing the existing system and replacing it with a radically different system.

When Obama, for example, announces that the US is the sole and indispensible guarantor of world order and peace and that he wants to close Guantanamo but then behind the scenes blocks any efforts to close it, he is a) carrying out the logic of the system of an empire that is using fear to dominate others, and b) as an individual consciously choosing to be deceitful to the public about his intentions and about history.

He is, in other words, mainly doing the part expected of him by the system, but he is also, secondarily, playing a fake role in order to deceive others. If he wanted to go against the system he could do so, though he would pay a price as an individual for doing so. He could, for example, hold a live press conference in which he announces that he is ordering as of that moment the immediate closure of GTMO. He has the power as the Commander in Chief to do that. His orders would result in GTMO’s closure. But he knows that if he did this he would face a huge amount of flack openly and especially behind the scenes for doing this.

If Obama really wanted to do the things that he publicly claims to uphold, such as the rule of law, due process, transparency, and protecting the planet from global warming/climate catastrophe he could announce to the world in a live press conference that he is ordering the end of preventive and indefinite detention, is no longer going to use drones to assassinate thousands, is pardoning Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning and Edward Snowden for daring to tell the world the truth, is not going to approve of the XL Keystone Pipeline because it would mean game over for the planet, is ordering a fast track emergency program to replace fossil fuel burning that is burning up the earth with wind and solar energy alternatives, and so on. He would not even need other countries to agree to follow this example. He could order this to be done by the leading industrial power and set an example for others to follow. He could do such a thing, as this is within his power as an individual.

You know what would happen to him if he did such a thing though, don’t you? People all have some level of understanding of how systems operate, even though many people due to the dominance of functionalist thinking explicitly argue against the reality of systems. In practice, due to our life experiences, we know things to be true that the paradigms that many people use to interpret the world contradict.

But Obama could do these things that I have mentioned above if he really wanted to do the right things that he claims that he wants to do and claims he is doing. He’d pay a price for doing it, but he would be doing a tremendous service to the planet if he were to do so because his actions, for however many minutes he was allowed to speak in this live broadcast before “technical difficulties” ensued, would spark widespread upheaval. He would probably spark a revolution. And then he would see happen the things he claims to want to see happen: the restoration of the rule of law, due process, transparency, and the safeguarding of the planet. The price he would pay for this would probably be his life. But if he really believes in the things he claims to believe in, then that would be a small price to pay for humanity and the planet.

The fact that he does not do these things or even any one of them is not a sign that he really in his heart of hearts wants to do the right things but simply can't. It proves that those who think he is being prevented from doing the right thing by the system are overlooking the fact that he could do the right thing if he cared enough and was not a liar who presides over an imperialist superpower. He says the things he says to the people because he knows that the Empire's continued existence depends upon lying to people in a very specific way. He knows that the vast majority of the people believe in fairness and due process and justice. The fact that the vast majority believes in these things is not a sign that the government is all-powerful but the fact that the government is in fact vulnerable, like a colossus with feet of clay.

That the government must promise these things as it does exactly the opposite of what it's claiming makes it vulnerable to being exposed for its deceit. If it wasn’t dependent ultimately upon the people’s acquiescence then the government would not open itself up to being shown to be lying. If the government were invincible, it would not risk having to lie as they do. They are telling us implicitly through their consistently claiming that they are doing the opposite of what they’re actually doing, that they need us and cannot do this without public acceptance. They are admitting that they are vulnerable to public opinion and actions, if you know how to properly interpret this. See here.

The fact that Obama chooses not to act in true correspondence with his public statements of thinking GTMO should be closed is partially, in other words, a conscious individual decision on his part that he should be held accountable for and responsible for, just as the Nuremberg Trials ruled that “I was only following orders” was not an excuse. At the same time, the point of this is that the main problem is not individuals but the system and its logic - the relentless and ruthless pursuit of profit.

For the further development of these points please see these three articles:

In today’s NYT in their story on the Isla Vista, Santa Barbara killings on May 23, 2014 by 22-year-old Santa Barbara City College student Elliot Rodger, one will find two quotes that I want to highlight and discuss. The first is from a police spokesman explaining why they did not do more than interview Rodger on April 30th in his dorm room after his mother contacted police alarmed at her son’s YouTube threats to commit mass murder:

“You’ve got to understand that this is a fairly routine kind of call that is quite commonplace,” he said. “The deputies are well trained and are adept at handling these kind of calls.”

A call from an alarmed mother that her son is making public threats to kill people is “fairly routine” and “quite commonplace”? No doubt the spokesman meant that the police’s visit to Rodger was routine and commonplace since they can’t be routinely getting calls from parents saying that their child is openly threatening mass killings. Obviously contrary to the spokesman’s statement, the deputies are not “well trained and … adept at handling these kind of calls” if they determined that someone who was soon to go on a killing spree was not a problem.

Speaking both as a teacher and as an activist, the single most difficult thing for people to learn is the significance of systems. People are so accustomed to the notion that individuals determine everything - they are, after all, taught this constantly by popular culture, the political and economic system, and by all too much of education - that there is substantial resistance to grasping systems’ centrality. Even those who endorse the primacy of systems (e.g., sociologists) mostly do not consistently apply this principle in their work or in their personal lives.

You can find many academics’ books and articles, for example, which do a tremendous job of laying out how systematic racism, sexism, class, economic exploitation, etc., are and how they structurally determine people’s lives. Yet when these authors get into offering solutions to these systemic problems they almost all offer prescriptions for solving these intractable problems in non-systemic ways. Since the problems are systemic in nature - which they have devoted 90% of their writing to showing - these problems cannot possibly be solved following non-systemic routes. Their prescriptions are therefore entirely illogical and will never work. The only way to solve system-level problems is to replace those problematic systems with radically different systems.

"Solet us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late” - Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

A number of my students, even those who have taken multiple courses with me, have a hard time overcoming a conceptual problem that is rooted primarily in a personal moral dilemma: they keep saying that revolutionary change will never happen because all these other folks in this country are willfully ignorant.

This is not true of all of my students. But it is true of a sizable minority.

So many students have said variations on this theme so frequently that it almost seems like an intellectual knee jerk reaction:

Many people choose to be ignorant about social problems… Perhaps many of the individuals [hide behind] their ignorance as an excuse for not participating or taking action [about] the problem.

[People] do not want to believe that political officials, such as our president, would lie to them. It is much easier for some people to live a blind life than [to] face reality.

In at least some of the cases, these statements come out of people’s personal experiences talking with some people that they know – some of their friends or some of their family. “I tell them about what is going on and they tell me they’d rather eat hot dogs.” To which my response, half-jokingly, is that you need to get yourself some new friends.

War is the continuation of politics by other [violent] means. -- Clausewitz

There may be no other political question quite as fraught with emotion and confused as the violence question. As with any other social or physical phenomenon, the surface appearance of things tells only the smaller part of the story.

The main error that people who oppose violence make when discussing violence is that they disengage the issue of violence from the underlying causes of violence. They treat violence as if it’s entirely separate and apart from anything else, as if it’s something from out of the blue with no place or reason for its existence. Violence is not something unto itself. Like anything else, violence is profoundly intertwined with other things and cannot be understood in isolation from those factors. If we are to thoroughly understand it and eventually do away with it as a major social problem, we have to strip away the emotional baggage that accompanies it and look squarely at it to see what its roots are and why it persists. Violence is a symptom, not a cause, of more fundamental underlying factors.

If you want to understand war – the ultimate exercise of violence – you have to understand politics. As the famous war strategist Carl von Clausewitz put it succinctly, war is the continuation of politics, by other, violent, means.

If you separate war from politics then you will not understand that war is politics continued into the stage of undisguised, massive violence. War is not some arbitrary or capricious phenomenon that is only used when some people lose their minds or self-control. It is qualitatively different than what happens when an individual loses their temper and resorts to violence.[1] War is something declared by governments and governments do not behave the way individuals do. War is an extremely conscious, thoroughly and comprehensively prepared for, and minutely maintained and sustained instrument of state policy. In the industrial age, war depends heavily not only on complex technological and logistical matters but requires the mass mobilization of public opinion, placing extraordinary strains both physical and psychological on those doing the fighting and the population in general, including the suffering due to war time disruption, mass casualties, destruction of infrastructure, economic strain, and the stress placed on soldiers ordered to kill others.

War is not something that if people would only “learn their lessons” from experience they would no longer engage in. War is the carrying out of political objectives by using openly massive violence when other forms of maneuvering and negotiations have failed or are not even resorted to. And just as there are unjust wars and just wars, violence is not something independent in nature from who is using it and why they are doing it. There is a huge difference, for example, between the violence of a rapist and the violence used by a woman who is fighting off a rapist.

David Cole writes in the current issue of the New York Review of Books:

As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” When I quoted Baker at a recent debate at Johns Hopkins University, my opponent, General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, called Baker’s comment “absolutely correct,” and raised him one, asserting, “We kill people based on metadata.”

Metadata is who is calling whom, how frequently, how long, and when. Their email and websnooping is similar: tracking who and what people associate with and how intimately and frequently.

Metadata, according to the NSA, is what they're collecting, not the actual content of the calls and emails. Obama and the NSA have said that it's "only metadata" in order to make it seem less invasive and less Big Brother. They are lying about it being only metadata because they are also collecting the content of our communications. Nonetheless, it's interesting, isn't it, that Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, volunteered that metadata is still enough for the US government to be using it to kill people.

Think about the gall that Hayden is displaying here. "It's only metadata. But it's enough for us to kill you based on it."

Due process, the rule of law, transparency, checks and balances, First, Fourth, and Eighth Amendment rights, all of these sacred principles that Obama constantly talks about safeguarding, while knowingly and ruthlessly sabotaging that which he claims to be upholding. Why talk about these principles unless it's to mislead people into accepting that which they would otherwise resist?

The title of this article is taken from a student’s recent comment. It is not unique to this particular student, however, but echoes comments one can hear frequently within and especially outside of academia.

His statement is true in the sense that no system produces 100% the desired outcome. But what is incorrect in the statement is his terminology. He is confusing the concept of utopias with the reality of systems

I agree with his assertion (reworded) that there are no utopias and that there can be no utopias ever, perfect societies in which all social problems have been completely eliminated such as crime and everyone lives happily ever after.

But utopias and systems are very different animals.

To say that no system is perfect reflects a lack of understanding of how systems work and to object to the idea that change is in dire need of happening. It's a claim that if you can't make a 100% perfect world through revolution then you're better off continuing to live with the existing one.

This comes from a position of privilege: my life is not so intolerable so I'm not going to support efforts to make a different world on behalf of those for whom the existing system is intolerable.

Does the planet get a say in this? If the planet Earth could speak, would it be saying right now: SAVE ME! I'm being destroyed!

Many people frequently make the mistake of concluding that what the majority of people - the mainstream - are doing is a direct reflection of what they're thinking and what they believe. In comments on this website quite a few people are repeatedly making this error. Social conformity, in contrast to that mistaken view, is overall more important than social consensus. Put another way, people tend to adopt the behavior of those around them not primarily because they agree with the behavior but because as social creatures, we tend to follow what others do. This isn't primarily a sign of personal weakness or a conscious decision to stay ignorant and put on "blinders," but because as social beings most people do what they see others doing. This is always going to be true of the mainstream of any society. You cannot blame the mainstream for the status quo. The mainstream doesn't make the status quo the status quo. They did not create and they are not primarily responsible for perpetuating the system that the mainstream and the rest of us live in. Most people at any given point are going to follow along with the norms that have been set by others. The mainstream never sets the norms. They follow the norms. By definition the mainstream are not the opinion-makers and norm setters. As the following article lays out, to change what people are doing you need to set new norms through what social psychologists call "social proof." People should, in other words, stop blaming others for being conformists and instead become active in helping to set new norms for others to see and adopt. To blame people for being conformists is like criticizing people for being social creatures. Human beings are, for better and for worse, social creatures, but that does not mean that social change is impossible. It means that social change occurs when braver and more insightful individuals break from the norm and set new norms for others to follow.

Part of the reason for this frequent error (aka the Fallacy of False Attribution) is not distinguishing between primary and secondary factors. Another way of putting this is that people generally speaking have been trained to think in black and white (aka dichotomous reasoning) rather than dialectically. See the above links here and here for a more thotough discussion of this vital methodological distinction. Learning how to think in a sophisticated way requires being able to tease out the difference between primary and secondary factors.

You cannot judge social phenomena (or natural physical phenomena for that matter) by primarily or exclusively looking at the surface appearance of things. This would be like trying to determine when and if an earthquake is going to happen based on what is currently happening. If what's currently happening, which is the case the vast majority of the time, is that there are no earthquakes, would you be safe in concluding that therefore since there are no earthquakes happening right now that there will never be and can never be any earthquakes? Of course not. Earthquakes build up under the surface and the fault lines are not generally visible above ground. Yet the tensions below the surface are building and at some point in time those hidden tensions will erupt in spectacular fashion with the whole ground shaking in an earthquake. In systems characterized by domination by a minority over the majority, conflict is ever-present, but the nature of that conflict is usually hidden and subtle. Only on rare occasions does that conflict break out into the open in obvious ways before the whole society. Thus, the surface appearance of people mostly going about their business not visibly challenging the powers that be is deceptive because the endemic oppression is concealed. It is, therefore, a mistake to think that the surface indicators of compliance is a sign of mass acquiescence. To really understand what's going on you have to probe beneath the surface and to do that you need much better tools than conventional thinkng and the ideas of those who now rule society. You need, instead, revolutionary theory. Seismologists similarly need earthquake science in order to study and predict (in probabilistic ways) future earthquakes.

Kitty Genovese was a 29-year old New Yorker stabbed to death in 1964 in front of her neighbors in Queens. The case is famous because dozens of bystanders in their apartments are believed to have watched, listened and done nothing to save her while she was being murderously assaulted over the course of an hour. As it turns out, contrary to common perception, someone did call the police and the widely reported thirty-eight people who watched was in fact a handful who did not see the attack occur in its entirety. The incident has, nonetheless, become important for what it symbolizes about the bystander effect problem: the more people there are who are witness to an emergency, the less likely any one of the people will act in response because of the diffusion of responsibility.

Why should this be? I'm not a psychologist (though I am surrounded by many of them in my joint department at work), but in investigating this on trusty Wikipedia, I came across this: "pluralistic ignorance is a process which involves several members of a group who think that they have different perceptions, beliefs, or attitudes from the rest of the group. While they do not endorse the group norm, the dissenting persons behave like the other group members, because they think that the behaviour of the other group members shows that the opinion of the group is unanimous. In other words, because everyone who disagrees behaves as if he or she agrees, all dissenting members think that the norm is endorsed by every group member but themselves. This in turn reinforces their willingness to conform to the group norm rather than express their disagreement. Because of pluralistic ignorance, people may conform to the perceived consensual opinion of a group, instead of thinking and acting on their own perceptions."

And then there is this: Social proof also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed." Importantly, a new social proof is established when someone steps in and acts, in so doing, creates new terms for others. Group dynamics are thereby realigned.

Most of America has been puzzled at the failure of most of America (or enough of America) to speak out effectively against the crimes against humanity and tyranny being carried out by our government. "Why isn't someone doing something?" you hear again and again in social gatherings and in classrooms. "Why don't the Democrats show some spine?" millions of people say. "What's wrong with Americans?" people decry.

In the Preface to Globalization and the Demolition of Society, I distill the book’s key themes and arguments in the space of two highly concentrated paragraphs. At the beginning of that summary I say the following:

Everyone and everything that exists does so only in relationship to other beings and to other things. (p. xii)

I mean this as literally as it is possible to mean anything. In fact, I mean this more literally than any other statement could possibly be literal.

One of the manifestations of this point is the relationship between individuals and groups. But that is only one concrete manifestation of this larger point that I would argue is the heart of dialectics.

Existence itself cannot be without dialectics being true. Put another way, it is impossible for there to ever have been or ever be a state in which there is not matter in motion. Put still another way, it is impossible for there to ever have been a time or ever be a time when there is only space without matter or matter without space.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 07 May 2014 23:40:41 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-heart-of-dialectics.html&quot;Where We Are in the Revolution&quot;http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/where-we-are-in-the-revolution.html
Announcing an Important Talk:

Editor's Note: We are helping to publicize this important talk that anyone who is burning with a desire for a radically different world should attend and wrangle with others with similar goals over these questions. Most people today think that the very idea of revolutionary change is outlandish, if they even dare to entertain the idea, even as some who think it impossible fervently wish that it wasn't. The people who rule this country, however, do not regard revolution as impossible. Indeed, as Dennis Loo has written at this website in many different articles, if those who rule thought that the masses of people were incapable of raising their heads up and becoming emancipators of humanity, then our rulers would not be trying systematically and relentlessly to prevent dissent and political upheaval through unprecedented laws and policies that annihilate core civil liberties. They would not dub people "terrorists!" for exercising their rights to free speech and assembly. They would not be spying on literally everyone and viciously going after whistleblowers who uncover the truth of what our government is actually doing and whose revelations prove authorities to be shameless liars committing grave crimes in our names. Our rulers would not be operating in the unsupervised, unaccountable, and authoritarian manner that they have been doing. The planet is being destroyed and the system and its leaders and authorities ask us to ignore the signs and go on as if nothing serious were happening. Nothing serious?! The very planet is being destroyed! These are times that demand that those who are the most aware of what's going on step up to answer the call. The world awaits. The future beckons. Who will answer the call?

The world needs a revolution. We need a radically new way of living, of relating to each other and the environment. People are needlessly suffering and dying every single day on account of this system. This must STOP—and it can stop.

But it can stop only if this capitalist-imperialist system is radically overturned and something new is brought into being. That requires a revolution. We need a whole new state power—one which will mobilize and back up masses of people in transforming society out of the madness of today and toward actual human emancipation. We need a new state power which could organize an economy to meet the people's material needs at the same time as it overcomes exploitation and inequality, and does so without plundering and warring on other nations or destroying the planet. We need a new state power which not only leads people to overcome and abolish the class divisions and inequalities that exist between groups of people, but to get rid of the oppressive institutions like white supremacy and male domination, and get beyond the ways of thinking that back up the rotten, backward order of today. The ultimate goal of this revolution and this new state power is communism: a world where people work and struggle together for the common good... where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings... where there are no more divisions among the people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world.

This May an important talk will be given in several major cities addressing how this could be done. This talk will dig into the strategy for making that revolution—seizing power—right here in the U.S. as our share in and as the first step towards struggling for such a world. While it is not yet time to actually go for the all-out seizure of power—the conditions to do so, which require a deep crisis in society and people in their millions having been won to the goal of revolution, do not yet exist—the talk will lay out how things could be brought to that point, through a combination of developments in the world and the active work of the movement for revolution, with the Party as its leading core. The talk will specifically discuss the movement today in relation to getting to that goal—including what must be done right now to propel things further toward the day when such a struggle could be launched, and how to make everything we're doing now contribute to that. It will get into the need to strengthen the leading core for this revolution, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, led by Bob Avakian.

"This is Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, with a New Year's message— A Call To REVOLUTION..."

If you have ever hungered for a way out of this suffering and madness... if you care about justice... if you today or at any time have thought we need a better world but despaired that such a world could be achieved... come to this talk. As Bob Avakian has said:

Revolution is not an impossible dream. It is not "unrealistic." Changing all of society, changing the whole world, is not a crazy or dangerous idea. What is crazy, and dangerous, is going along with the way things are, and where things are heading, under this system. Revolution—a radical change in how society works, how we relate as human beings, what our values are, how we understand the world and act to affect it—this is what we, what people all over the world, desperately need. And it is a lot more realistic than trying to "fix" this system.

Come to this talk. Find out about this revolution, and where we are in the process of making this revolution. Learn how to become part of emancipating humanity.

"Where We Are in the Revolution" An Important talk from the Revolutionary Communist Party sponsored by Revolution Books in these areas. It has been scheduled for the following dates:

(Doors open at 6:30, Program begins promptly at 7 pm) Grace Place 637 S. Dearborn (just south of Harrison, 1 block west of Red Line Harrison stop) $10 donation requested (no one will be turned away if you can't pay)

San Francisco Bay Area: Thursday, May 15

7 pm Pacific Film Archive Center, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley (UC Berkeley campus, one block east of Telegraph on Bancroft Way. Take Bart to downtown Berkeley station, take AC Transit buses 51B or 49 on Shattuck to the corner of Durant and Bowditch, walk north one block on Bowditch one block to Bancroft Way. )

“It is great and amazing to be a part of it. I was surprised that in a public university in New Jersey in the United States we could actually get enough students mad enough to actually take this form of action, and it is great that so many students are so passionate about this. Finals are right around the corner for us and a lot of people have papers due and even so the people in this group want to do as much as possible. We posted on Facebook, we emailed professors, we’re talking to people on the streets, we’re publishing fliers, we’re going to start putting up stickers, we’re putting up banners, we’re doing demonstrations. We’re trying to get the word out and we’re trying to get people as passionate about this as they should be and as we are. One of the ways to do this is demonstrating to people that something like this that is giving our stamp of approval, all our collective stamp of approval as students who go to this university, against someone who has committed atrocities in the world, who has allowed and promoted torture and who hasn’t let people live, we are not going to let her be invited here uncontested, that this isn’t OK. I do think that this is more important than class and to a certain extent more important than papers. A lot of people, including myself, have to keep our grades up to even stay here because college costs money and people need their scholarships and people need to be thinking about the future but this is happening here and this is happening now and it is a lot more important than these other things because it is going to shape what our future looks like. Right now, just because we are doing this so many people are questioning who she is and what she’s done and what the administration did and what they have done and what kind of society we want to live in, and that is a great thing and it is so much more valuable than them trying to shut us down because class is happening.”

– A Rutgers student activist on their successful protests against Condoleezza Rice’s scheduled commencement address and honorary law degree

On May 2, Condoleezza Rice released a statement that she was bowing out of an invitation she had received to give the commencement speech at Rutgers University on May 18. This is a major victory for students at Rutgers University who had been organizing escalating protests to demand that the university rescind her invitation. Fifty students staged a sit-in outside the Rutgers University president's office, and 100 students had confronted him with sharp questions and chanted their opposition when he appeared publicly a few days later. News of the students' protests spread around the world. Condoleezza Rice was the Secretary of State under President George W. Bush and she is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for her role in the U.S.'s immoral, unjust, and illegitimate wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the systematic use of torture. Her decision not to attend the Rutgers graduation reveals just how much the rulers of this country fear the truth of their crimes coming to light and how much they fear the potential for even greater political resistance and opposition. The courageous actions of these students won a victory for the people all over the world and

Revolution newspaper was happy to speak to one of the students involved in these protests. The following interview was conducted the evening before Condoleezza Rice made her announcement, so the student does not comment on this development.

Revolution: I am very happy to be talking to you. Monday was the first time I heard about what was brewing at Rutgers because you and about 50 other students took over the president’s office for a day. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us what you were a part of and why.

Student: OK, Monday we went into the administration building where President Robert Barchi’s office is. We did this in protest of Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State, coming to be commencement speaker at this year’s graduation. She was invited to come almost a year ago but it was only released that she was coming a month ago. This invitation was put out without any form of consensus or consultation or any of the above to any faculty members, student groups, any Rutgers community except for the president himself with the Board of Governors. And the reason why this is such a big issue is because no one was consulted and Rice is someone not just controversial but someone who should be convicted as a war criminal because of all the things that she has endorsed, signed papers to allow, and instigated.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 06 May 2014 02:31:14 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/student-protest-forces-condoleezza-rice-to-pull-out-of-rutgers-commencement.htmlPolitical Power and &quot;Human Nature&quot;http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/political-power-and-human-nature.html
Political Power and "Human Nature"

By Dennis Loo (May 1, 2014 - International Workers' Day)

Many people in this country do not see government’s role clearly because they have been misinformed about what government does and why it does it.

There are two essential tools that all governments use – and must use – in order to exercise political power: persuasion and coercion.

Before going into further detail about those twin tools, some important background: Governments have not always existed and, in fact, for the vast majority of human societies’ existence, governments did not exist. It was only with the advent of an economic surplus that governments came into being as a means by which the unequal distribution of economic goods could be maintained.

In the absence of a body of people using force, any economic surplus would be distributed roughly equally because anyone who was in want while others had more than they needed would insist on it. It is only through coercion that such a surplus can be kept in the hands of a (well-off) minority.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 08 May 2014 00:51:33 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/political-power-and-human-nature.htmlTwo Points About What We Facehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/two-points-about-what-we-face.html
Two Points About What We Face

By Dennis Loo (4/28/14)

This article is prompted by many people's comments that the public is powerless in the face of invincible governments and that "human nature" dictates that people are driven by selfish desires for material wealth.

First, if authorities were truly impregnable because the populace is all too bought off, "fat and happy," mall-obsessed automatons, then authorities would not need to be spying on everyone in the world. They would not have to be passing and using the most repressive legislation seen in generations or, in some cases, ever in US history. Obama would not have had to be put forward by the powers that be as the first black to be US president to superficially change the face of US imperialism and be the supposed savior to keep millions within the system’s fold. He would not have to have a "kill list" that he adds names to every Tuesday and he would not be using rendition, torture, indefinite, and preventive detention. Obama would not constantly be talking about the importance of upholding "the rule of law," "due process," "transparency," being opposed to torture and the holding people at GTMO, and so on, while doing the exact opposite of these things, if most people, especially those who are soceity's opinion-leaders at all levels, did not value these things. The media and public officials would not have to conceal, lie about, and distort what the government is actually doing.

Obama or whoever else is in the White House could instead say something like this: “We’re the sole imperialist superpower in the world and what we say goes, no matter what the law says because we make the rules, and if you don’t like it, then we will crush you. Now, the rest of you Americans: go spend more money so the rich can get richer!”

This is worth really thinking through. If you do that, you will see that indeed, if most people were really as selfish and philistine as so many people believe and have been taught by authorities to believe, then there would not have to be misdirection and outright lying by authorities about what they are doing and why they’re doing them. They would not have to pretend that they are operating based on high principles. They could be straight with people.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 29 Apr 2014 13:39:35 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/two-points-about-what-we-face.htmlA New Take on &quot;Transparency&quot;http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/a-new-take-on-transparency.html
A New Take on "Transparency"

By Dennis Loo (4/25/14)

Obama likes to talk about how his administration is the "most transparent" in US history. Here's the latest version of that “transparency,” as reported by Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News on April 21, 2014:

The Director of National Intelligence has forbidden most intelligence community employees from discussing “intelligence-related information” with a reporter unless they have specific authorization to do so, according to an Intelligence Community Directive that was issued last month.

“IC employees… must obtain authorization for contacts with the media” on intelligence-related matters, and “must also report… unplanned or unintentional contact with the media on covered matters,” the Directive stated.

Significantly, the Directive does not distinguish between classified and unclassified information. It includes anything as “covered matters” that are “related” to intelligence, no matter what its classification status. Here’s how the Directive defines “covered matters”:

2. This Directive is limited to contact with the media about intelligence-related information, including intelligence sources, methods, activities, and judgments (hereafter, "covered matters").

Editor's Note: This is a follow-up to address a major question from students who attended the Raymond Lotta talk about communism, socialism, and capitalism at Cal Poly Pomona on April 9, 2014. This is Part One.

Anyone who runs for office in the US and claims that they will "make the system work" (to serve the people) is not telling you the truth. A few of those who say this may be sincere but they cannot deliver on this promise. The system is working the way it's designed to work and it's working in a manner that fulfills democratic theory’s assumptions. Democratic theory isn't a fabulous idea that just needs to be implemented properly. Democratic theory is actually an impoverished theory, deprived from its inception of what it allegedly promises to fulfill, authentic popular rule. The problem isn't the practice, in other words; the problem is the theory itself and the conditions that gave rise to it and sustain its prominent place as the governing public theory. I say governing public theory because those who actually run things know very well that behind closed doors is where the real deals are made and that “governance by the people” is a charade meant to deceive the people.

Democratic theory, contrary to its proponents and even almost every one of its critics, rules out of hand from the very start that the people should ever actually come to over time progressively govern every arena of society. Instead, democracy and voting specifically are viewed as the only way that the "ruled" can throw out those who "rule" when the rulers become overly tyrannical. Democratic theory, in other words, provides no means by which the "ruled" can ever become the "rulers" themselves. For a much more developed discussion of these points, see this link where I discuss the crucial difference between treating democracy as an end in itself versus as a means to an end.

What I'm going to focus on here is a different angle from that link's discussion. This angle relates to a question raised by commenters on the Raymond Lotta talk about communism, socialism, and capitalism. The question is: how do you and can you prevent a new set of exploiters from rising to power after a revolution that establishes socialism? This question is actually closely related to the question about democracies and democratic processes because they both bear on the question of the masses of people’s role in relation to leaders and to the exigencies of collective life and organizing that collective life. In answering this question, a whole array of related issues come up.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 21 Mar 2017 02:49:50 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/capitalism-socialism-and-communism.htmlSpain: Call it a Dictatorship and They Throw You in Prisonhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/spain-call-it-a-dictatorship-and-they-throw-you-in-prison.html
From A World to Win News Service

April 14, 2014. A World to Win News Service. A Spanish high court sentenced the 25-year-old rapper “Pablo Hasél” (Pablo Rivadulla Duro) to two years in prison for “glorifying terrorism” on April 1. Several years ago, this “anti-system rapper,” as he calls himself, declared, “If they put me in prison, that will prove I’m right”—right that almost 40 years after the end of the fascist regime of Francisco Franco, despite economic, social and political changes, the Spanish state is still the enemy of the majority of Spanish people and the people of the world and “the critical spirit.”

Hasél was arrested in November 2011, during a time of upsurge in the country’s streets, when the police raided his home in the night and confiscated his digital devices, papers and books as evidence. At his trial before the high court for political cases, the judge ruled that the only question was whether or not Hasél was the author of the dozens of videos uploaded on YouTube and elsewhere on the Net. Since Hasél unhesitatingly stated that he was, the conviction was all but automatic. Hasél argued that he had the right to freedom of speech, but the judge ruled that while that freedom exists in Spain for some speech, Hasél’s rap constitutes “hate speech,” prohibited by law, and further, that “terrorism is the worst violation of human rights,” so no one has the right to defend it. (El País, April 1, 2014)

This is the standard legal double-talk that is the hallmark of the Spanish state: “terrorism” is an affront to “democracy” so those accused of it have no rights, those who defend those accused of it have no rights, those who argue for those people’s rights are “apologists for terrorists” and so on in a widening spiral. But in sentencing an artist to prison for nothing but his words, this is a further step in demonstrating the truth of his words, that in capitalist countries “freedom of expression is nothing but freedom to lie or shut up, and like democracy, freedom of expression is one of history’s greatest swindles.”

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 24 Apr 2014 18:37:45 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/spain-call-it-a-dictatorship-and-they-throw-you-in-prison.htmlYou Cannot Change the System By Using the System’s Own Logichttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/you-cannot-change-the-system-by-using-the-system-s-own-logic.html
You Cannot Change the System By Using the System’s Own Logic

By Dennis Loo (4/22/14)

While there is no shortage worldwide of those who dearly want to see a different system in power, there is an acuteshortage of those who understand how to do that.

There are answers but most people are looking in the wrong places.

If you want to change what is, you first have to understand why what is is.

It isn’t enough to see the need for change. It’s definitely not enough to have good intentions. You have to deeply understand why the status quo continues to be the status quo. You have to be, in a word, scientific.

The first thing you need to do in order to be scientific is to understand that it’s a system that we’re dealing with and that systems are not principally a product of the individuals within them.

Most people who recognize that the current system has to go don’t yet realize that this is a system and many of them are still using the same analytical tools and the worldview of those in authority.

This is specifically apparent when they cite that the problem is other people.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 23 Apr 2014 05:11:26 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/you-cannot-change-the-system-by-using-the-system-s-own-logic.html&quot;Lesser Evils&quot; and Other Ways of Deceiving the Peoplehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/lesser-evils-and-other-ways-of-deceiving-the-people.html
"Lesser Evils" and Other Ways of Deceiving the People

By Dennis Loo (4/20/14)

The Republicans have a fascist core in their party but that does not make the Democrats the “lesser evil.” The view that public policies’ nature is determined by the president’s party affiliation does not reflect political reality. Elites do not decide what they will do based on what the public wants them to do. The notion that elites do what the people want is what we’re constantly told and what democratic theory claims, but it is not how elites actually operate. Instead, public policies are a product of authorities’ efforts to implement their agenda without incurring too much public resistance to their moves. Thus, deception and manipulation are crucial ingredients in their recipes for rule.

If you compare Obama’s presidency to that of a hypothetical John McCain presidency or Mitt Romney presidency, it is actually likely that Obama’s policies have been more rightwing than a Republican White House would have been. It is likely that a Republican would not have been as successful as Obama in deporting more immigrants than did George W. Bush, would not have been able to keep Guantanamo open this long without massive protests, would not have been as free to openly keep and add to a “kill list” as has Obama, would not have been able to defend and disarm as many people about the NSA’s universal spying, would have met far more resistance to policies designed to further limit women’s rights to abortion, his bailouts of big banks, his energy and drilling policies, climate change inaction, and so on. Had a Republican tried to emulate what Obama has done, the protests against these measures would have been much more massive and intense in the streets because more people would have been clearer that these policies when carried out by a Republican are not in the public interest than they have been when it’s being done by a black Democrat with a silver tongue.

What matters is not, in other words, what public opinion actually is. What matters is what is presented as the dominant public opinion to the public. What people think others think matters a great deal.

Even within the US, capitalism’s heartland, the degree to which people are pro-capitalist is highly exaggerated. You would think judging from mainstream media and the comments of politicians and pundits that everyone is in love with shopping and capitalism. Given that the capitalist class is in charge, this is not surprising: if people knew how unpopular capitalism was in the US, such sentiments would spread and be more openly and boldly expressed, further contributing to those sentiments’ popularity and influence.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 20 Apr 2014 17:13:26 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/lesser-evils-and-other-ways-of-deceiving-the-people.htmlHow Can I Figure Out What’s True?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/how-can-i-figure-out-what-s-true.html
How Can I Figure Out What’s True?

By Dennis Loo (4/17/14)

[T]he battle over truth and over perception—what is true and what needs to be taken into account given its objective reality—are central to any attempts at social change. – Globalization and the Demolition of Society, p. 354

I get a lot of insight into what kind of questions are on people’s minds through my teaching. My students’ questions, especially when they are encouraged to express them, are an excellent guide to what is useful for me to write and speak about. This week a major question that we discussed was how someone can figure out what's true, given all of the competing claims in media and on the web. Not only is this important for individuals but it is even more important for the society since the vast majority of people would not know how to begin to determine the truth. Most people don't even currently know that they are being constantly lied to by their government and that the mass media are concealing and distorting the truth so they don't know that they need to dig deeper. To a) even know that you need to be skeptical and then b) to know how to weigh competing claims requires rigorous training. Many of those who graduate from college and even post-graduate education know 'a' but how many of them can handle 'b'?

In my senior seminar, students are learning about how distorted the news media’s coverage is. Only six major corporations now control 90% of what we see, read, and hear. Go back a couple of decades and the number of major media owners was in the scores. Many did not know before learning about this just how concentrated the ownership pattern is and how the profit motive impacts what we are told, how these issues are framed, and what we are not told.

They are also going to be learning much more about how ideological and political matters intersect with the profit motive: how it is not simply the pursuit of more revenue that is in play here but also the preservation of and justification for the capitalist-imperialist system. Making money, in other words, is not the sole goal because if it were, many TV shows and personalities such as Phil Donahue and Keith Olbermann would still be on the air since they drew huge audiences when their shows were cancelled.

After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period [1981-2002] and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite.

The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the the [sic] preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying oragnisations [sic]: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."

Last night at Cal Poly Pomona, Raymond Lotta spoke about his just released eBookYou Don't Know What You Think You "Know" About . . . The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future.

For those of you who were unable to attend the talk in person, a video is being prepared of the talk and I will notify you as soon as it becomes available.

Lotta’s talk introduced a new generation to a completely different view of communist revolutions and communism than what almost everyone has been previously been told is the truth.

“Everyone knows,” as so many people today in the US would say, “that communism has been a disaster.”

In Oscar Pistorius' case, a pattern can be seen in the wretched and embarrassing spectacle of his frequent and over-the-top emotional displays in court - retching, sobbing, covering his ears and/or eyes because he can't stand to see the results of his actions - together with his fevered professions of love for Reeva. This pattern is consistent with his behavior the night he and Reeva argued and then he killed her through the safety (in his eyes) of a locked door. I say "safety" because he didn't have to see what his bullets were doing to her as he was murdering her, just as he now cannot stand to see the results of his actions and just as he now cannot and will not take personal responsibiity for his actions. While he was systematically executing Reeva he was likely thinking to himself as he pulled the trigger four times while Reeva screamed in terror and trauma that he was similarly not to blame for what he was doing but that Reeva had brought it on herself.

I am going to expand on the central point I made in Part 2 regarding the chronic and pronounced underestimation by existing systems of humans’ conscious dynamic role. (Part 1 is here.) This is a point worth elaboration; it’s a perspective that very few people in the world have ever been exposed to.

According to Democratic Theory, the public’s role in politics is at most to vote every few years to determine who will rule over them. As Karl Popper put it:

[D]emocracy, the right of the people to judge and to dismiss their government, is the only known device by which we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power; it is the control of the rulers by the ruled.

Popper thus rules off the table from the start that the people can and should move over time to more and more actually govern themselves. The very best that democratic theory offers is that the people can “protect ourselves against the misuse of political power” by those who the people elect. The goal of genuine self-governance is treated as not even worth considering.

Democracy, according to this view, is at the very most a barrier against tyranny. Democratic rule, according to this view, is satisfied when people vote. In other words, democracy = the vote. If the rulers become too tyrannical, the people can “throw them out” through their votes and replace them with rulers who are less tyrannical.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 09 Apr 2014 02:57:08 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-weapon-of-criticism-part-3-humans-conscious-dynamism.htmlThe Weapon of Criticism Part 2: Why Are Things This Way?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-weapon-of-criticism-part-2-why-are-things-this-way.html
The Weapon of Criticism Part 2: Why Are Things This Way?

By Dennis Loo (4/5/14)

The two most common views about why the political and economic systems are the way that they are might seem to be polar opposites of each other, but they are in fact rather similar in their premise upon closer inspection.

Let’s first begin with the most common view.

Most people when asked about the exercise of political power in the US would say that the political system exists as it does because the majority of people want it to be that way. If the people didn’t want it to be this way, they say, then the public would not tolerate the status quo and the status quo would change.

This belief that the system continues because the public wants it this way doesn’t come from people’s studied observations, from interviewing people, or from polling data or other systematic collection of evidence. Instead it originates from assumptions within the dominant theory in the US. It arises from classical democratic theory’s precept that the political system mirrors what the people want. If people are using democratic theory as their paradigm - which is what the vast majority of people employ - then they are compelled by the paradigm’s assumptions to see things this way.

According to democratic theory, the people are supposed to be in charge therefore they are in charge. You see this in statements such as “what’s on TV is because there’s a large audience for it, otherwise it wouldn’t be there” and “if people really wanted something else, all they have to do is boycott what they don’t like and demand what they do like and they will eventually get what they want.”

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 08 Jan 2016 19:37:08 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-weapon-of-criticism-part-2-why-are-things-this-way.htmlBreak It Out into the Open!http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/break-it-out-into-the-open.html
Break It Out Into the Open!

A Senate intelligence committee investigation found that the Central Intelligence Agency employed brutal interrogation methods that turned out to be largely useless and then lied about their effectiveness, according to TheWashington Post.

As described to the Post, the Senate report contradicts the main defenses of the Bush-era torture program: That harsh methods were needed to produce actionable results, and that the program itself helped save American lives by foiling terror attacks. Instead, the CIA overstated the effectiveness of the program and concealed the harshness of the methods they used. Intelligence breakthroughs credited to the “enhanced interrogation” program by the CIA were instead gleaned through other means, and then used by the agency to bolster defenses of the program. The intelligence committee is set to vote on submitting the report for declassification on Thursday.

All systems of governance require doctrines of legitimation to stay in power. These doctrines are not, contrary to some commentators’ views, the only thing keeping states in power; governments also require the use of coercion. The use of coercion is directly tied into and justified, however, by those legitimation doctrines.

Governments could not govern without the ability to get those who refuse to accept governmental policies to go along. Your ability to exercise political power would be rendered null and void if you could not compel those who resist to cooperate, albeit reluctantly. This use of coercion is not something that is unique to governments nor is it something that governments as long as they exist could do without. Even parenting involves doing things that involve force, albeit force of a loving kind: you force children to go to bed at a certain time and make them eat their vegetables. If you let them do what they wanted then they would stay up too late and they would eat ice cream and candies all of the time. We call that use of compulsion parenting. Coercion exists on a spectrum, ranging from parental guidance and rules for their kids to friends ribbing their friends for certain behaviors and attitudes all the way up to state violence. All group life involves and will always involve some level of compulsion because group life requires group norms and cooperation and unanimity is almost always impossible.

While the muzzle of a rifle against someone’s temple is an argument that is immediately settled in favor of the one holding the rifle, no states can stay in power indefinitely without maintaining an air of legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of the population. If a government had to rely for its survival solely on its use of state violence, it would be in deep trouble and would be toppled sooner rather than later.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 12 May 2014 16:23:26 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-weapon-of-criticism.htmlIf What You’re Really Interested In Is The Truthhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/if-what-you-re-really-interested-in-is-the-truth.html
If What You’re Really Interested In Is The Truth

By Dennis Loo (3/28/14)

It has become popular nowadays to say that "everyone has their truth." Anyone who asserts that there is such a thing as objective truth is seen from that perspective as being impolite, arrogant, inflexible or dogmatic and to be avoided in polite company. It is true that there are those who assert that they have a monopoly on the truth and that their critics should be silenced. But these sorts are hucksters and reactionaries who are not truly interested in the truth but are instead interested in dominion over others. They are frequently to be found citing chapter and verse from holy texts or from secular versions of such allegedly uncontestable authority. One of the telltale signs of their lack of fidelity to and feigned concern for the truth is precisely their intolerance for dissenting views and their refusal to have an open discussion and debate with those who disagree with them.

There is also a phenomenon that declares that truth is wrapped up in one's "identity." According to identity politics, what is true is specific to, knowable by, and only really understood by those of a subgroup such as one's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so on. Others "wouldn't understand" and have "no right to speak about" the truth known by that group. While people's identities obviously vary due to differences in life experiences, positioning in various social inequalities, and so on, treating identity as the be all and end all interferes with or makes impossible finding common ground and working to end the marginalization of certain groups. The zenith of this outlook's shortcomings I witnessed firsthand while attending a conference at the University of California at Santa Cruz during the 1990s when a well-known African-American scholar actually declared at a plenary session that "we should accept it that we will always be at the margins [of power]." In other words, he was making a virtue out of being marginalized and oppressed and ruling off the table the effort and goal of ending oppression.

The intolerant belligerence of those like Bill O'Reilly and others of the Right finds an unlikely ally philosophically with those of some of the political Left in postmodern and identity politics. Both advocate an exclusivist philosophy. Truth is not something, however, that is anyone's exclusive territory to be jealously guarded against others. That approach reflects an atitutde of treating truth as a commodity to be hoarded rather than as something to be shared.

If what you’re really interested in is the truth, even if the truth means inconvenience, difficulty, embarrassment, and/or sacrifice on your part to acknowledge and act upon what’s true, because truth is what animates you rather than what is personally expedient, then approaching things in a straightforward and fearless manner and taking on all comers and critics is not only going to characterize your attitude, it must characterize you because truth emerges through contention and controversy.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sat, 29 Mar 2014 18:41:07 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/if-what-you-re-really-interested-in-is-the-truth.htmlTo Know a Pear One Must Bite Into a Pearhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/to-know-a-pear-one-must-bite-into-a-pear.html
To Know a Pear One Must Bite Into a Pear

By Dennis Loo (3/28/14)

I came of age politically during the revolutionary upsurges of the 1960s. They are principally responsible for who I am politically and socially today.

These movements made it unmistakably clear that not only were powerful and large social movements possible – these movements, after all, were rocking the nation and world – but revolution itself was possible. Revolution was most definitely on the table.

My academic studies as an undergraduate also taught me something profoundly important. I was a government major and I studied closely two examples of bureaucracies' behavior, the US Interior Department’s attempt to protect cattle ranchers by poisoning prairie dogs and the US military’s defoliation campaign in Vietnam. In both instances not only did I learn that the empirical foundation for these governmental policies was at best suspect – the prairie dog wasn’t causing cattle deaths and destroying the jungle wouldn’t win the US’s war in Vietnam – but I also more importantly came to see the disjuncture between what public officialdom said they were doing and why they were doing it versus their actual policies and behavior.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 28 Mar 2014 23:34:28 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/to-know-a-pear-one-must-bite-into-a-pear.htmlThe World We Live Inhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-world-we-live-in.html
The World We Live In

By Paty Moreno (3/24/14)

Editor’s Note: This is a student’s final paper in Classical Sociological Theory, Winter 2014

Do you know the type of world that you live in? Do you know everything there is to know? Of what you know, how do you know whether it is true or not? People are not fully aware of everything that [is] happening in our society. Most often they are blindfolded by what they believe to be true and unaware of the reality of what is really happening. To be able to understand fully everything that is happening in our world today, we must look at the various arenas within our society and how they actually work. What is our understanding of the world that we live in today, and what can be done to further understand the hidden reality? This country that we live in is supposed to be democratic, however is democracy really what we think it is?

What is democracy? Democracy can be described as equal opportunity for the people to participate by electing representatives, that people have the power in electing who they want to be represented by. However, is voting really representing “of the people, by the people, and for the people?” (Loo, Globalization and the Demolition of Society, p. 216). Many people do not realize that democracy is nothing but an illusion. In modern society today, people believe that simply by voting democracy has been fulfilled. “Getting politically involved in the US, in other words, means one thing: Vote!” (Loo, GDS, p. 218). But the reality is that these representatives are pre-selected for the people. They do not have a choice but to vote on what is available to them. Whether people like those elected or not, they do not have much of a choice but to choose one of them. Loo (2011) describes a similar example:

“If someone offers you vanilla ice cream and you eat it with relish, this does not mean that you decided that you would rather have vanilla than, say, chocolate. It merely means that you respond favorably to vanilla and are willing to eat it… you would rather have vanilla ice cream than nothing at all.” (GDS, p. 220)

This example is trying to demonstrate that people are only given certain representatives to vote from but it doesn’t entirely mean that you like one more over the other, but rather there is one which you preferred. You are willing to accept it even though you didn’t initiate that candidate. Most importantly to understand the meaning of democracy we must understand whether democracy is an end in itself, or a means to an end.

Editor's Note: This is a student's final paper in Classical Sociological Theory, Winter 2014.

For an individual to truly understand politics they have to go through extensive training, the type of training and preparation that most Americans never receive. It is very difficult for an individual to fully participate in governmental decision-making if they lack the skills and the knowledge that are necessary to make an informative choice. The United States is essentially telling its citizens to run before learning how to crawl.

The government is unwilling to teach its citizens the very basics. Even adults with college degrees do not know how to analyze something as simple as a president’s speech. An example of this is when the president says we are at war in order to protect our people and everyone cheers, but in reality our troops are risking their lives and some are losing their lives, and all the while the majority of us do not even know the true reason of why we are still at war in the first place. Instead of questioning the president and demanding the war to end, we simply agree with him and believe him. The United States blames the individuals for their lack of knowledge and involvement instead of recognizing that our government and educational system are failing us.

They lie by saying that the majority rule, when in reality the majority remains oppressed and are the least benefited. A true democracy is supposed to bring with it equality; what Americans have is the complete opposite of that. In order to have a better understanding of governmental power one must know the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy, the nature of both, and the prospects for change.

The indispensable shibboleth of our times is “democracy.” Everyone says that they are for it. Nearly everyone who decries the lack of democracy believes that the problem arises from an imperfect implementation of an otherwise sound theory. What we have in actual practice, however, is the full implementation of democratic theory. What is wrong, in other words, is not the poor implementation of a great theory.

The central notion underlying democratic theory itself – that the best the people can do is decide who will rule over them every few years – is hopelessly flawed. How could authentic popular rule be restricted to the “ruled” deciding every so often who the “rulers” will be? If the ruled are really those in charge, then how come they are still called the “ruled?”

Those of us following Pistorius' trial for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp have all seen photographs of, and heard reports about, him covering his ears frequently, bowing his head down so that he cannot see, and vomiting while details of Reeva's devastating physical condition are revealed. Yesterday, ballistics expert Capt. Chris Mangena testified that the physical evidence shows that Reeva was standing facing the door of the toilet room that she locked herself in when Pistorius first opened fire, shattering her hip bone and causing her to fall backward against the magazine rack in the room. His second shot missed, richocheting off the wall and sending fragments into her back. His third shot hit her right arm and his fourth shot went through her hand in front of her face and penetrated her brain, instantly killing her.

Besides allegedly "screaming like a woman" while he was murdering Reeva - his defense team's hilarious attempt to account for witnesses' hearing Reeva's screams while she was being shot - Pistorius seems unable to face the reality of what he did while enraged, rather like the locked toilet room door that concealed from him the tragic visual of Reeva unsuccessfully trying to escape from Pistorius' murderous rage. Her screams while being shot, however, I'm sure Oscar did not cover his ears for while systematically executing her.

Oscar Pistorius covers his ears, but he can't cover his bloody tracks.

There have ever been those who counsel that change is not possible in the face of power and popularity. It will always be so. It is simply not possible to be for justice in the face of injustice and not have to battle against the odds to achieve it. The most advanced understanding gains its footing only through struggle. If it were not the most advanced understanding then obtaining it would be easy: just do what the lowest common denominator wants to do. (GDS, pp. 341-342)

Back when the Bush Regime occupied the White House, the way they occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, and equally illegitimately, I was one of the leaders of the national effort to impeach Bush and Cheney. In the course of those years, as the very first words out of their mouths upon hearing that I was involved in trying to get Bush and Cheney impeached, four people told me, in separate incidents, exactly the same thing in exactly the same words: “It’ll never happen.”

No one else I spoke to or heard from ever said this. People either said they didn’t think they should be impeached – a minority - or they thought that they should be impeached – a majority - but no one else declared with this kind of self-assured certainty: “It’ll never happen.”

The four people who said this didn’t preface their declaration with, “I hope they are impeached, but it’ll never happen.” Or, “It should happen, but it’ll never happen.” Or even, “I would like to see it happen, but it’ll never happen.”

No, they were dead certain that it would never happen and their smug remarks were meant to say that they would certainly not be caught dead doing anything to help it happen. The four people who told me this were all middle-aged, white male professionals, three of them professors. One of them has very bad politics, so I expected that from him, but the other three of them claim that they're progressive.

One of the most dangerous forces at work in our world today, perhaps the most dangerous force, is an assault on truth coming from the Right and from some elements of the Left, bolstered by the growing power of increasingly concentrated corporate media, advertising, public relations, and government propaganda, emanating from both major political parties, all trying to convince us of what is true irrespective of actual truth. Stephen Colbert satirically dubbed this trend to downgrade truth as “truthiness”—the semblance of truth. This attack on reality, on science, on reason, and on the Enlightenment is intimately connected to developments in the economy and politics, this book’s core subject. Globalization and its political expression, neoliberalism, could not continue to exist and prevail without the degradation of the meaning of truth. (Globalization and the Demolition of Society, p. 2)

In the academy nowadays it is popular to hold relativist views – the idea that everyone has their own “truth” and there is no objective truth and no objective reality. In the non-academic world this view also enjoys widespread adherence – in the world of commerce it’s the in-thing to tell people that they can have things their own way, commodities tailor-made for individual preferences. Some version of “I have my opinion, you have yours, and facts can mean whatever I want them to mean" is very common in discussions, both face-to-face and online.

It is impossible for even the most avid believers in relativism, however, to actually function as relativists in their day-to-day life. No society could actually operate based on relativist principles – society would quickly fall apart because no one could be counted upon to do what is expected of them. Everyone, including avowed relativists, lives their lives as if objective reality exists. Science, notably, depends upon an objective world’s existence: an empirical universe that does not depend for its actuality upon human consciousness. Airplanes fly and satellites orbit earth based on empiricism, not postmodernism's perjorative about "scientism."

While it is true that individuals can have differing interpretations of what is going on in any given situation, it is even more true that virtually everyone except the certifiably insane or very young children acts according to universally recognized norms about the reality of physical objects, location, time, and the laws of physics such as mass. If you parked your car on the second floor near the west elevators in the parking garage this morning, when you return to pick up your car, you will find it exactly where you parked it in the morning, barring an earthquake or other disaster that moved your car, and barring someone stealing your car.

In the academy nowadays it is popular to hold relativist views – everyone has their own “truth” and there is no objective truth and no objective reality. In the non-academic world this view also enjoys widespread adherence – in the world of commerce it’s the in-thing to tell people that they can have things their own way, commodities tailor-made for individual preferences. “I have my opinion, you have yours, and facts can mean whatever I want them to mean.”

It is impossible for even the most avid believers in relativism to actually function as relativists in their day-to-day life. No society could actually operate based on relativist principles – society would quickly fall apart because no one could be counted upon to do what is expected of them. Everyone, including avowed relativists, lives their lives as if objective reality exists. Science, notably, depends upon an objective world’s existence: an empirical universe that does not depend for its existence upon human consciousness.

While it is true that everyone has different interpretations of what is going on in any given situation, it is even more true that virtually everyone except the certifiably insane or very young children acts according to universally recognized norms about the reality of physical objects, location, time, and the laws of physics such as mass. If you parked your car on the second floor near the west elevators in the parking garage this morning, when you return to pick up your car, you will find it exactly where you parked it in the morning, barring an earthquake or other disaster that moved your car, and barring someone stealing your car.

The blatant inconsistency of those who claim to be relativists – they say that no objective reality exists, but they all act as if there’s a shared empirical world – is a sign that relativism is a bankrupt philosophy. If it were true, then you could live it and there would be no inconsistencies between your beliefs and your lived practices.

Relativists who try to implement their philosophy in concrete ways invariably make a royal mess of things. For example, when I was a graduate student, my fellow teaching assistants (TA’s) and I went on strike. With one exception, the TA strike leaders on my campus were postmodernists. Postmodernists believe that there is no objective reality and no objective truth; it is all interpretation. It is all “text,” or “discourse.”

After the strike had been underway for a few weeks, the suggestion was raised at a strike meeting that a poll be conducted of TA’s at the university to see how many TA’s were still honoring the strike. The postmodernist strike leaders opposed such a survey on the grounds that the results of the survey might discourage people and thereby injure the strike. They did not want to know the objective truth, nor did they want anyone else to know the objective truth. They worried the truth might conceivably harm morale. These same strike leaders also never bothered to seriously reach out and discuss the strike with potential allies such as the faculty and those who worked on campus (such as construction workers). Their failure to do this created endless amounts of consternation among supportive faculty and workers who would have otherwise been pleased to honor fellow workers on strike, sizably contributing to unnecessary friction with those who would have been fast allies. These postmodernists’ idea of a strike was literally that a strike existed if there were at least a handful of strikers with strike signs walking in a picket line at the entrances to campus. Since they were all about “”representation” and “signs and symbols,” a picket line with signs = a strike. Working with others by organizing and outreach was not their idea of striking, perhaps because outreach smacked too much of something real rather than representational.

Those who wish to dismiss the idea that injustices need to be fought against can also find in relativist philosophy a handy justification for their and others’ inaction: if it’s all about interpretation, then those who are suffering are merely suffering subjectively and your sense of their suffering is also merely subjective for you. That makes it so much easier to dismiss real injustices as phantasms of those experiencing those injustices, providing narcissistic or self-centered individuals with a ready-made excuse for their self-centeredness.

If the radical changes that need to take place and cry out to take place are to take place, relativism has to be repudiated as an obstacle in the way.

“The concept of the ‘official secret’ is the specific invention of bureaucracy, and nothing is so fanatically defended by the bureaucracy as this attitude.”[i]

“The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us.” - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, 3/11/14

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who never met an NSA surveillance program that she didn’t like and who called Edward Snowden a traitor for revealing to the world that the NSA was spying on everybody, delivered on Tuesday from the Senate floor a 45-minute blistering attack on the CIA for, of all things, daring to spy on, secretly take documents away from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the CIA’s detention and torture program, and strong-arming the Committee by filing criminal charges against it for a putative theft of documents.

Besides the constitutional implications [violating the separation of powers and Congress’ role of supervising the executive branch], the CIA’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.

So the good Senator has finally discovered the Fourth Amendment! It’s one thing for the NSA to be spying on everyone but quite another for the CIA to spy directly upon the Senate Intelligence Committee in an effort to intimidate it. I wonder what it was that Feinstein didn’t previously understand about the meaning of universal warrantless surveillance – that universal also includes Congress?

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:57:08 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/sen-feinstein-to-cia-you-can-t-gore-my-ox.htmlCan Systems Be Changed By Working From Within?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/can-systems-be-changed-by-working-from-within.html
Can Systems Be Changed By Working From Within?

By Dennis Loo (3/10/14)

I remember being told by my mother when I was in my early twenties that some family friend who was older than me by several years had said to her that I ought to “work within the system” to achieve change. This family friend had heard through the grapevine that I was some kind of radical and thought that I ought to get my head screwed on straight and change the system from within.

Had I listened to that advice I certainly would have had a cushier time of it in my life.

I could have parlayed my Harvard degree the way that at least some Harvard graduates do, to put me on a fast track for a powerful position of influence. That way, I could have really “changed things from within.” Right?

That’s what Barack Obama did, liberally borrowing from the rhetoric of those fighting injustice in order to advance his personal goals for the highest office in the land.

And just look how many things he’s changed since gaining the presidency!

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 11 Mar 2014 04:56:49 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/can-systems-be-changed-by-working-from-within.htmlThe APA, the Use of Torture, and the Sandy Hook Tragedyhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-apa-and-the-use-of-torture-and-the-sandy-hook-tragedy.html
The APA, the Use of Torture and the Sandy Hook Tragedy

By Dennis Loo (3/10/14)

On March 7, 2014 psychologists Roy Eidelson and Trudy Bond published an OpEd regarding the American Psychological Association’s decision to close an ethics case against a Guantanamo psychologist, thereby declining to take disciplinary action against him.

As Eidelson and Bond summarize:

Dr. [John] Leso was sent to Guantanamo within months of the arrival of the first detainees, where he led a new "Behavioral Science Consultation Team." Numerous detailed and authoritative documents - a US Senate report on detainee treatment, a leaked interrogation log, an Army investigative report, previously classified meeting memoranda and recent reports from The Constitution Project and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession - all clearly implicate him in designing and participating in abusive and torturous interrogations at Guantanamo, including that of Mohammed al Qahtani. Over a two-month period Mr. al Qahtani was subjected to almost daily 20-hour interrogations, strict isolation and sleep deprivation. He was frequently hooded, terrorized by military dogs, forced to stand naked with female interrogators present, forced to wear a woman's bra with a thong placed on his head, led around by a leash, forced to perform dog tricks and violated by other forms of abuse.

The APA has at the heart of its ethical principles a “do-no-harm” dictum. To have the APA refuse to sanction Dr. Leso for this is scandalous. Eidelson and Bond state: “When psychologists betray this trust, they cause harm not only to their direct victims, but also to the profession as a whole. Just as importantly, when unethical acts are committed with impunity, they lend a veil of legitimacy to forms of mistreatment that diminish and jeopardize our society's fabric of decency.“

Note especially the last part of their words: “when unethical acts are committed with impunity, they lend a veil of legitimacy to forms of mistreatment that diminish and jeopardize our society's fabric of decency.“

Systems are qualitatively different from the individuals who occupy those systems. Systems operate according to system logic … – from Part 1 of this series

Systems that involve people can be usefully understood as a consistent pattern of mutual expectations among those within the system and that system vis a vis other systems. People occupy statuses and roles within systems and their behavior and attitudes are primarily shaped by those statuses and roles, not by their individual personalities. As I state in the Preface to Globalization and the Demolition of Society:

Individuals do not principally give systems the character that those systems possess; systems and structures principally shape individuals’ behavior. (p. xii)

If you are operating within a system and are abiding by that system’s logic, your actions are predictable within certain parameters. Everyone individually is a little different – some more different than others – but the nature of a system is such that highly idiosyncratic individual behavior is just that, idiosyncratic and not the norm. If most people did not adhere to the norm of a given system, then that system would not be a system.

You cannot fix a system unless you understand how it works. This is something that people understand when it comes to everyday things like machines - such as a car that is not running or an iPhone that is on the blink - or a person whose health is troubled. You have to know how a car works, how iPhones work, and you have to understand how a person’s body works in order to have a chance at fixing them when they start to break down.

While we know a tremendous amount about human-made machines and how they work, that knowledge is not something equally shared in the population. Most people consult a mechanic who has specialized training in automobiles when their car malfunctions and make an appointment with someone at the “Genius Bar” in the Apple Stores when their iPhone starts working improperly.

When it comes to people’s health, you don’t have to know everything there is to know about the body because there is still much that we don’t yet understand, as biological systems are much more complex than automobiles. But there are certain fundamental matters that we do understand, such as that viruses and bacteria can cause illnesses and that we have immune systems that help us to stay well and that routinely fight off germs that we encounter constantly. Usually people who are ill will go to experts who have devoted themselves to studying and treating illnesses – physicians and other health care deliverers.

You’ve all heard the lesson in school or in citizenship classes, repeated many times with great pride: what distinguishes the US from tyrannies is that we are all treated as “innocent until proven guilty.”

Candidate Barack Obama made a special point of invoking this principle while running for the presidency in 2007-8. After convincing millions that the presumption of innocence and his opposition to torture and to warrantless surveillance were what distinguished him from the despised Bush White House and why we should vote for him, he has … since … stopped talking about it.

Instead, in his speeches since assuming office, he’s spoken about the importance of “balancing” our freedoms and liberties with “security.” He’s warned that there are those who are “out to harm the United States” and that these people cannot be tried and he will not release them.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 28 Feb 2014 23:55:47 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-new-legal-principle-you-re-guilty.htmlIn Sports and Other Arenas, Is It All About the Money and Winning?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/in-sports-and-other-arenas-is-it-all-about-the-money-and-winning.html
In Sports and Other Arenas, Is It All About the Money and Winning?

By Dennis Loo (2/27/14)

Those who set the overall standards in our society celebrate the alleged virtues of money and winning. It's all about the money and winning is everything, they say.

But is this really true? Is it all about the money? Are those who come in second, the first "losers"?

While some individuals are certainly driven by their cravings for money, the really outstanding contributors in history weren’t motivated by the money – many of them did what they did before money was even available - but by the challenge of what they were doing. Michael Jordan, for example, is famously competitive and hates to lose at any game he’s playing whether it’s basketball, golf, cards, or what have you. While he certainly enjoys his money, his excellence didn’t derive from his thirst for the Benjamins. If it did then there would be a lot of Michael Jordans because there are many people who crave riches.

Steven Wozniack who created the first working Macs wanted to give the idea away to the world. In creating the first Apple computer he wasn't driven by the desire for money. His co-founder Steve Jobs convinced him that instead of giving the idea away to the world for free they should start a company.

Despite the conventional view that Jobs was a great inventor, what Jobs was was a brilliant marketer who understood that function and design should go together. The key ideas behind the Apple Computer were actually invented by the Palo Alto Research Group (PARC), brilliant inventive minds hired by Xerox to plot out the paperless future. When they came up with the first working PC and showed it to Xerox, Xerox executives were unmoved. Jobs heard about what PARC had done and asked to be shown it. When he was, he instantly recognized the importance of GUI (graphical user interface, the basis for the mouse), which Xerox failed to see.

When people talk about racism many, perhaps most, treat racism as if it's the same thing as individual prejudice. This is an error.

Racism is both an ideology and a system of domination. In systems that are racist, some groups by virtue of the group that they are labeled as belonging to are considered inferior and less deserving of the rights that the superior group or groups enjoy. Race is a social construction and not a biological feature. In biological terms, there is only the human race; there are not subcategories of distinctly different "races." The notion of race (whites, blacks, etc.) is socially (and historically) constructed and not a natural physical or biological category.

The idea of different races rests upon an arbitrary emphasis on specific and varying, depending upon what culture you're in, overt physical features (phenotypes) such as skin color, hair texture, nose size and shape, stature, etc. In some cultures race is signified by how tall you are. In some it's signified by skin color and in others race has nothing to do with skin color. In biological terms there is greater variation within so-called races than there is across races, which further indicates the arbitrariness of the notion of race. In very homogeneous places like Japan race is invented (the Barukamin) based upon putative traits among those who have historically been confined to professions such as skin tanners.

This is something you can do! Engaging social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are now very important ways to reach out to, create a "buzz" and to mobilize, people all over the country. The February 26 Day of Outrage and Remembrance for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis needs to go "viral." One way to broadcast this widely is through social media like Twitter and Facebook.

We will be using the hashtags - #hoodiesup #TrayvonMartin #JordanDavis

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 25 Feb 2014 04:30:31 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/wed-feb-26th-day-of-outrage-and-remembrance.htmlThe US Government is a Paper Tigerhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-us-government-is-a-paper-tiger.html
The US Government is a Paper Tiger

By Dennis Loo (2/23/14)

In the face of revelations ...

that the US government has been spying on literally everyone, imprisoning indefinitely and even preventively detaining people at places like Guantanamo, torturing people without granting any of those they’re torturing the right to challenge their indefinite detention,

that Obama has a “kill list” that he adds more names to every Tuesday, resulting in Hellfire missiles fired by remote control from drones that have killed thousands, including hundreds of children,

and that anyone is now subject to accusations of “terrorism” for merely exercising their First Amendment rights,

a few students of mine, upon learning the magnitude of these governmental transgressions, have expressed not only shock and anger but fear.

It is here where, as Bob Avakian has put it, epistemology and morality meet. What fear leads to, if one gives into it, is not good. Fear that keeps someone from fighting against grave injustice leads one sooner or later, inexorably and inevitably, to adopting the stance of the infamous “Good Germans,” those who in the face of the Nazis, obediently followed orders and cooperated with fascist authorities, including by participating directly in committing atrocities upon those most directly targeted by the regime.

If one responds to those who traffic in fear by focusing on trying to save one’s own skin, the logic of that approach can only bring you and others to grief.

That is the moral question: do we fight against injustice or do we allow it to go on? Do we determine what we should do on the basis of our own self or do we look at the larger picture and act on behalf of society and humanity? Do we cower before bullies or do we rise to the occasion?

There is also the epistemological dimension. How do we know what we know? When we say that we know that the US government is so powerful that it can do whatever it wants and resistance to it is futile, how is it that one arrives at such a fact? Is it in fact a fact?

Editor’s note: These are excerpts from a student paper in response to the Close Guantanamo Now! program at Cal Poly Pomona on 1/17/14. Her comments address directly the question of why Obama refuses to close Guantanamo despite promises to the contrary and what it will take to force him to close it.

Guantanamo Bay is very important symbolically because it allows the U.S. to maintain its power... Intimidation is the best way to keep control under those who you see as your competition or enemy… These people who are incarcerated were arrested on no actual charges, just on mere suspicion of committing a terrorist act… These acts are all characteristics of a tyrannical empire. In the United States we pride ourselves on being a democracy, yet we invade other countries and kill innocent people under the name of [combating] terror from other countries while terrorizing others. Perhaps we believe that the lives of Americans are more valuable than lives from other countries.

…

The United States is an Empire that grows on subordinating other countries; this is how Empires grow. An Empire does not grow by befriending others with good acts; it grows by demonstrating power and subordinating other countries. Obama understands that in order for the U.S. to remain as a top Empire, threat and terror must occur. This is the foundation to imperialism.

Emmett Louis Till was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14. While buying something from a small local grocery store, he reportedly called to the married 21-year-old white proprietor, "Hey baby." Till lived in Chicago and was visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi, not knowing that his friendly greeting was a capital offense for a black male in the South. Roy Bryant, the husband of Carolyn Bryant, the proprietor, and his half brother J. W. Milam, kidnapped Till from Till's great uncle's house, took him to a barn where they beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, then shot him through the head, and before dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River, tied a 70 lb. cotton gin around his neck with barbed wire, a reminder that blacks were and always will be slaves in the minds of white racists. Till's brutal torture and murder helped to spark the civil rights movement.

"You're not going to talk to me that way!" -- Michael Dunn, before he fired ten shots at five black teens, killing Jordan Davis, while Davis and his friends sat in their car at a gas station. Their crime? Playing their music too loud and not turning it down when told to by a white man.

(Editor's Note: This is a student paper written in response to the 1/17/14 Close Guantanamo Now! event at Cal Poly Pomona. Posted with author's permission.)

The United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay was established in 1898 and became a token of power after the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War. Upon gaining control of this portion of Cuba, the question became what to do with it. In 1993, Guantanamo Bay was used as a detention center for the first time. Even though this “safe-house” was told to disband, Guantanamo disregarded closure and continued to detain the Haitians, as well as expanding its jurisdiction and detained Cubans who were attempting to venture to American soil. Many believed the unlawful treatment of those being detained was both cruel and unlawful; this raised questions as to what exactly the rules and protocol are at Guantanamo Bay. According to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in January of 1995, it was ruled that constitutional rights “bind the government only when the refugees are at or within the borders of the United States.” Unfortunately, this allowed the military to do as they choose, since Guantanamo Bay is located outside United States Territory.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 21 Feb 2014 19:03:16 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/guantanamo-it-s-our-job-to-spread-the-word.htmlPeople are a Lot Smarter Than They’re Allowed to Behttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/people-are-a-lot-smarter-than-they-re-allowed-to-be.html
People are a Lot Smarter Than They’re Allowed to Be

By Dennis Loo (2/20/14)

Because I’m an educator and spend a lot of my working life in classrooms and in my office interacting with students, I have the frequent opportunity and responsibility to see firsthand what students know, don’t know, and how they handle new information.

The young, as the saying goes, are our future.

They are also, to a considerable degree, our present.

In any of the great movements in history – revolutions, the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, the anti-war movement, the Occupy movement, and so on – young people have been at the forefront, in many cases making up not only a plurality of the participants but constituting much of those movements’ leadership. Young people are additionally responsible for most of the new musical and art forms. Finally, they make up the bulk of those who serve as soldiers in wars.

Yet despite this – or perhaps because of this – our educational system treats young people as much dumber than they really are. As one of my students, Edith Flores, wrote in a recent paper:

When [the US prison camp at] Guantanamo opened [in 2002] I was still in High School, which might explain why I was unaware and unknowledgeable about the details. Many schools do not teach their students real life politics. It seems as though they do not like to discuss true events. The denial of knowledge brings with it ignorance, especially when it is about important issues that need to be dealt with. Teachers cannot expect students to fight for a good cause if the students are not given the right tools for it. The educational system here in the United States is just simply ridiculous. They focus on having students memorize information for a short period of time rather than truly understanding it and learning it long term.

To follow one’s passions and to be able to survive is something largely lost in society today. The influence and restriction of money, the corruption of intent it induces, negates the ability to follow your interest. For an example you need only look to parents who decide what career their child will take based on its average salary.

The world now contains 6.5% of all humans that have ever lived. That number may seem small but when stretched over our evolutionary existence it puts the magnitude of our species in perspective. We inhabit every continent, indulge in every climate, and sustain ourselves with widespread luxuries. Yet with all our numbers we are failing to provide the same opportunity that was presented to each successive generation of our ancestors. Some blame this on over-population, but I say it is under-utilization. People today live by working jobs that serve the purpose of upholding the functioning of a society that has grown to its seams. We produce food for our population with only 2% of our workforce being in agriculture. That means that the other 98% are working jobs that do not directly bring food to their plates. They pay for it with money they earn but the jobs they do are not working fields and tending cattle. This is an advantage over every single earlier generation where large portions of the population were directed only towards providing sustenance. Yet because of this we have the development of an economy largely aimed towards production of unnecessary goods and overconsumption. We structure our ideology and goals to be excessive beyond measure and individualistic to desensitize ourselves to the injustice and irrationality that simultaneously creates billionaires and starving children. This ability to create that has been given to us by agriculture’s mechanization is usurped by the necessity to be a “productive member” of the society that has no long-term purpose.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 19 Feb 2014 17:10:18 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/purpose.htmlGuantanamo: What I Knew was Scant and False http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/guantanamo-what-i-knew-was-scant-and-false.html
Guantanamo: What I Knew was Scant and False

By Leslie Becerra (2/18/14)

Editor’s Note: This is one of many student papers written in response to the Close Guantanamo Now! National Tour’s Last Stop at Cal Poly Pomona on January 17, 2014. Reprinted by author’s permission.

When 9/11 happened I was only eight years old and unable to understand what exactly it meant. I don’t remember much about where I was when I saw the news or whom I was with but I do remember when the war began. There is an image that has always stuck with me about the war. I was watching the news in my mother’s room one night when the broadcast was suddenly interrupted by the news and behind the anchor in a big screen played live images of the first bomb being dropped in Iraq. It’s been that image that I think of when anyone mentions 9/11, until recently. As my education has progressed I have learned more and more about what 9/11 did for this country. Those events brought our entire nation together in solidarity for those who lost their lives and their families but it also did something horrible. The events of 9/11 made our nation hate and fear an entire group of people for no real reason. Due to the government and the media’s manipulation of events we all began to think of American lives as more valuable than the lives of these people. It is that very belief that allowed our government to commit atrocities against other humans without anyone putting into question their motives.

The worker “has no need to take in very vast areas of the social horizon; it is enough for him to perceive enough of it to understand that his actions share a goal beyond themselves.” – Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society.

In other words, give the working class their “beer, burgers and Monday Night Football.” Give them their daily dose of What’s Up With the Kardashians. Keep them distracted by their iPhones and Sony PlayStations. Lead them by the nose by telling them that everyone in America can be “middle class” and promise them that their government is after their best interest. Meanwhile, ship off their sons, daughters, and fathers to wars where they will die or be maimed in body and/or mind. Don’t tell them the truth because they “can’t handle the truth.” Pretend that the global climate crisis isn’t real or at least isn’t that serious. Keep on selling them those big CO2 producing trucks that rumble even while they’re idling. Don’t let them realize that the sweatshops of China are the gritty reality behind the shiny iPads and the essence of the new global assembly line.

Isn’t it remarkable that Durkheim, one of the founding figures of sociology, should consign the majority of humanity to the status of essentially beasts of burden who shall be denied the “vast areas of the social horizon” and merely told that their actions contribute to a goal beyond themselves?

The problem, as Durkheim explicitly saw, was that if you exposed the working class as a whole to the vistas that humanity as a whole has created (which includes what workers have created collectively and how they did it, such as the Seven Wonders of the World) that they would no longer tolerate being confined to the drudgery of working class life:

If one acquires the habit of contemplating vast horizons, overall views and fine generalizations, one can no longer without impatience allow oneself to be confined within the narrow limits of a special task. Such a remedy would therefore only make specialization [the division of labor and existence of classes] inoffensive by making it intolerable and in consequence more or less impossible.[1]

Several years ago I visited a college class in which a student was doing a presentation about global warming. He used as an illustration of this the long-distance transport of salmon from Russia to the US. His point was that the use of fossil fuels in this distribution contributed to global warming. In response a student piped up that she thought this was actually a good idea because it “created jobs.”

This reminds me of the stock cheerleader Jim Cramer who I happened to catch one day yammering on TV about the melting of the Artic ice cap. Rather than expressing alarm at the impact of this on the world’s environment (over the last ten years one-half of the Artic ice cap and two-thirds of its volume have melted), Cramer was celebrating the ice’s disappearance as opening up access to oil and other resources in the Artic for oil companies. “Get in while the getting is good!” was his enthused message.

Decades ago when I was attending a public hearing in Hawaii about a proposed hotel development set to be erected on community land, an issue that the residents of this community and their supporters had mobilized around to stop, a representative from the Carpenters’ Union, who like many of the protesters was also part-Hawaiian, showed up to support the development on the grounds that “it creates jobs.” I thought to myself, “By that logic, there would be no point in stopping any resort developments. We could keep on building until the islands are all filled up and what would you do for carpenters’ jobs then?”

Here is the problem with the “it creates jobs” argument: you have to be utterly incapable of thinking outside the box of capitalist logic to fail to realize the inanity of this argument.

In our comments section invitation we state, “Truth emerges through contention.” What do we mean by that? Isn’t truth something that is considered indisputable and accepted, established by science or by some other authoritative means? How then can it emerge through contention?

Perhaps truth is in the eye of the beholder: whatever is true for one person may not be what is true for someone else. In that case truth is something that varies from person to person and contention between different people’s views would be useless because there would be no point of saying that one view was more truthful than others.

Or perhaps truth is what a majority of people agrees upon, in which case truth is “what everybody knows” or at least majority opinion is what public officials take their cues from in shaping public policy. That is what democracies are supposed to be anyway. This is certainly the working definition used by pollsters like Gallup and why they poll people so much: to find out what the majority of Americans think because what a majority think is supposed to guide public policy.

Before getting to the heart of this question, a preface: not everyone is interested in the truth because first, some people benefit from the truth being withheld[1] and second, some people regard truth as whatever makes them feel comfortable and whatever doesn’t interfere with their privileges.

For both of these groups, debating with them about what’s true is usually a waste of time. But in instances where others are listening in on your debate with them, it can be a tremendous learning opportunity for observers since drawing out smug people’s arguments and evidence in contrast to someone who really treasures the truth is revealing. One of the reasons it’s a learning opportunity is because truth emerges in the course of contention. People in general don’t know what they don’t know and when what they hear so much is actually subjected to close examination, they have the opportunity to have their eyes opened. Debate and discussion between those parties who both want the truth is the most productive and exciting, but both kinds of debates are useful.

Truth is not an optional accessory, something that we adorn ourselves with to show off in the way that some people preen with their fancy clothes, cars, trophy partners, or houses. It is not a commodity, something that you can buy the way McDonald’s hands you a burger and fries when you pay for them. It is not being materially rich and being materially rich isn’t proof that you have any knowledge about what really matters. Truth is more important than anything and cannot be measured in common ways.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 10 Feb 2014 21:33:31 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/truth-is-not-an-optional-accessory-truth-and-orthodoxy.htmlThe Day We Fight Back Against Mass Surveillance- Tues., Feb. 11http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-day-we-fight-back-tues-feb-11.html
World Can't Wait's Message for February 11: The Day We Fight Back

World Can't Wait | February 6, 2014

We in the US have a government that relies on terror and repression to maintain its rule, here and around the world. We live in a country whose government assassinates thousands with drones. Our government, driven by the relentless pursuit of profit, is plundering the earth, exploiting humanity, and imperiling our planet's very viability. This government tortures people while holding them indefinitely without trial and uses warrantless surveillance over all of us to try to identify those who might pose a threat to their agenda.

President Obama recently announced that the vast NSA spying will continue, with a few restrictions. Edward Snowden and the journalists who are still releasing stories from the files he made available are being called spies and being threatened with assasination by members of the US Congress. Once again, the role of those commiting crimes, and the victims, are reversed. Tuesday, February 11 is The Day We Fight Back against mass surveillance. Organizations, companies and online platforms are joining in to say, "This moment is whatever we, the broad community of people who care about the Internet, make of it. Post a comment with a link to every NSA-related story. Make and share a meme. Build a website. Organize an event. Then tell us about it so we can spread the word."

Some organizations are directing people to support bills in Congress, like the "USA Freedom Act" put forward by James Sensenbrenner, a sponsor of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. But, the most decisive factor that the people can take to defeat the outrageous mass surveillance is to build mas resistance, not by "limiting" or "mending" illegitimate actions of the government.

Sign up to install widgets on websites encouraging its visitors to fight back against surveillance. (These are being finalized in coming days.)

Use the social media tools on the site to announce your participation.

Develop memes, tools, websites, and do whatever else you can to participate -- and encourage others to do the same.

When Obama talks about “national security” he means securing the US government's right to commit crimes with impunity.

A government that commits such crimes should be ridiculed and opposed whenever they tout their supposed “freedom” and “democracy.”

Mass surveillance is unacceptable and we must say NO to it.

Government officials won't stop this without mass protest. Why should we rely on those who started the crimes to stop those same crimes?

We draw inspiration from and stand with Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, the hunger strikers at GTMO and domestic US prisons, and other courageous resisters who have illuminated the truth about what this government does. This is what the U.S government correctly fears.

It is on us, the millions of people living in this country, acting together with people around the world, to stand up, tell the truth, and say no. February 11, make it known to the world that we will not accept mass surveillance or any other crime committed by the US Government in the name of “national security."

In Part 2 of this series I explained how issues presented to the public invariably contain within them unstated value assumptions. If you don’t know how to explicitly identify those values and evaluate them, then you will be unable to truly think on your own. You’ll be forced to accept those hidden values as your own. Since the framing of an issue pre-determines what is “on the table” and what is not, by accepting that frame as the appropriate one you have bought into the values of those who framed the issue in the first place. Examples that I used included such things as “support the troops” and the “war on terror.” If you accept the “support the troops” framing then you have given up your ability to oppose the war because you’ve been seduced into seeing it in terms of the US troops rather than the question of what it is that those troops are doing. If you accept the “war on terror” frame then you are now stuck thinking that anything done to “fight the terrorists” (i.e., opponents of the US government) is acceptable because the “good guys” (i.e., the US government) must ward off the implacable danger that the “bad guys” (anyone who questions the government’s “anti-terrorist” policies) present.

It is by this means that those who actually run the country manage to smuggle in and carry forward their agenda while still falsely convincing most people that the public is in charge of public policy. They do this sleight of hand trick in plain sight.

My point illustrated by different framings of issue can be generalized on a higher level. To demonstrate this I am going to next discuss the two major paradigms in sociology and their respective arguments about how the world is and should be. These two paradigms correspond to a basic cleavage in the ways that all people see the world. In other words, even for those who never studied sociology and/or have never heard the term “paradigm,” their world outlook and understanding of why things are the way that they are can be basically categorized into either one of these two major paradigms.[1]

Work is deemed so fundamental to human existence in many countries around the world that it is regarded as a basic human right. Deprivation of work, particularly among men, is strongly associated with depression and violence. (p. 149)

Capitalism exists based on the logic of "expand or die" (which reminds me of cancer's logic). Because the fundamental source of value is human labor, because making profit means getting away with paying workers as little as possible, and because unemployment must therefore be maintained to keep wages low - if there were full employment wages would rise because there would be no more desperate people willing to work for a pittance in return for a job - this basic human right that Alexander refers to is systematically denied to many. Unemployment is hence not fundamentally due to laziness or fecklessness but the basic workings of capitalism's logic. Even if everyone in the society had graduate degrees such as MDs and Ph.D.s, the occupational structure would remain the same. There would be doctors picking fruit in the fields.

Back when I was a lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaii I invited as a guest lecturer to our class a highly successful Chinese-American capitalist named Hung Wo Ching, who, among other things, founded Aloha Airlines and who was the first non-white (non-haole) person allowed to buy a house in Kahala in the 1960s. During his entertaining talk he said, unprompted, that "I like unemployment." Explaining this he said that without unemployment he would have to pay his workers much more and this would cut into his profits.

I began this series’ first installment by pointing out that contrary to Obama’s Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind’s view that education consists of conveying a body of knowledge, education’s essence is not a discrete packet of information; it is learning how to think.

Life, after all, does not come with an answer key.

There are those who think – or hope - that there is an answer key. They tend to be drawn to fundamentalist beliefs such as fundamentalist Christianity or fundamentalist Islam, both of which believe that the answer key to life resides in a sacred text. Who better an authority, after all, than the literal words of God or Allah?

Yet even those who adhere to such beliefs cannot escape the need for interpretation and the need therefore to rely on authorities that claim the ability to correctly interpret the putatively literal words of God or Allah – with each authority convinced that the other fundamentalist religion's authorities are absolutely wrong, despite the fact that both religions are Abrahamic.

One of the central contradictions in this country’s educational system today is the gap between, on the one hand, the great stress on delivering information to students and, on the other hand, students developing the ability to actually think. Bush’s "No Child Left Behind" and its successor, Obama’s "Race to the Top," are based upon the premise that students need to demonstrate that they have learned a body of knowledge. Their emphasis on passing tests, however, has systematically undercut the importance of training young people to think holistically.

Knowledge and thinking are not entirely separate from each other because you cannot generally speaking think in the abstract without information or data with which to think. Even the most abstract of human endeavors, mathematics, is tied to the real world of concrete objects in motion, even if the specific development of pushing the envelope in math is not always immediately being applied to real world matters. Put another way, and perhaps more generally: problem-solving strategies cannot be employed unless you have an actual problem that you are trying to solve. Thinking, in other words, does not occur in thin air: it is tied to our desire to know and the need to know more about the world and to attempting to fit the pieces of a puzzle together without having a fully assembled picture to work from in order to guide us on where the individual pieces of that puzzle belong.

What has been left substantially out with this stress on high-stakes testing is teaching students how to make sense of and draw conclusions from different pieces of information. In the real world outside of the classroom, the general condition is that of incomplete information and of complexity. The world is not simple, despite Staples’ ads touting their EASY answers to everything, and when we act in that world most of the time we do not have complete information. We have to act based on partial information and most of the time we have to make decisions based on inference rather than direct and explicit knowledge.

“Being an imperial power, however, is more than being the most powerful nation or just the most hated one. It means enforcing such order as there is in the world and doing so in the American interest. It means laying down the rules America wants (on everything from markets to weapons of mass destruction) while exempting itself from other rules (the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the International Criminal Court) that go against its interest.”

– Michael Ignatieff, Director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, writing in The New York Times Magazine, “American Empire: Get Used to It,” January 6, 2003.

This article by Ignatieff was published before the Abu Ghraib Scandal. In this essay – note its title: “American Empire: Get Used to It” - Ignatieff fully and unapologetically embraced the descriptor of “Empire” for the US’s role in the world. This represented a turning point where liberals like Ignatieff - note that his job was as a human rights director – as well as conservatives, who had for years been denying that the US was an Empire, finally dropped the pretense and said that Americans should happily own up to being an Empire and all that that entails. Bandwagons are big enough for hypocritical liberals as much as unabashed right-wingers, after all.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 31 Jan 2014 08:12:14 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-obamanan-empire-sotu-and-sgt-first-class-cory-remsburg.htmlAre Public Policy and Media Mirrors to the Public? The Difference Between Initiative and Receptivityhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/are-public-policy-and-media-mirrors-to-the-public-the-difference-between-initiative-and-receptivity.html
Are Public Policy and Media Mirrors to the Public? The Difference Between Initiative and Receptivity

By Dennis Loo (1/29/14)

While preparing to write my dissertation I came across an extremely useful distinction - the difference between initiative and receptivity - in a dissertation by Katherine Beckett. I have used this distinction ever since, both in my writings and when I talk with students, about why public policy is the way that it is and why what media depict in entertainment and news are not simply mirrors to the public.

The common view, in contrast to this, is that public policies (e.g., the War on Terror or the War on Drugs) and media’s superficiality (e.g., media's love affair with reality shows and shallow news coverage) is a product of public demand and interest. If, as an “advertising expert” cited in a recent article about the declining Nielsen ratings for Keeping Up With The Kardashians argued, the public was truly tired of the Kardashians, then all they would have to do is stop watching them and stop buying their endorsed products, and KUWTK would go away immediately. Thus, the Kardashians persist over the airwaves and the Internet, this expert said, because the public wants them to. In other words, it’s the public’s fault that trivial shows like KUWTK exist.

Peter Swire, chief counselor for privacy in the Clinton Administration from 1999 to 2001, special assistant to Obama for economic policy in the National Economic Council, and currently serving on Obama's Intelligence Review Group, described the new paradigm for government surveillance to PBS's Frontline show in 2007 as "Check everybody. Everybody is a suspect."

This is a momentous shift in the nature of governance: treating everyone as a suspect and checking everybody. Under this new principle, you are no longer innocent until proven guilty. You are instead assumed to be guilty and nothing you do, assuming this principle remains, can relieve you of that indefinite status.

Some people's reactions to this are that "I have nothing to hide." But, as I have written previously, responding to that perspective from various angles, this view undermines the very foundational principles of an open society and gives limitless power to the government to chill and to crush dissent.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 28 Jan 2014 00:09:26 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-us-government-everyone-s-a-suspect.htmlCa State Assembly Tries to Dictate University Syllabihttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/ca-state-assembly-tries-to-dictate-university-syllabi.html
Stephen Zunes : How the state Assembly tries to limit what I can teach

In preparing my syllabus for my introductory course on the Middle East this semester, it gives me pause that the California Assembly is still on record declaring that discussing certain well-documented historic incidents in modern Middle Eastern history should "not be tolerated in the classroom." This unprecedented attack on academic freedom came in the form of a resolution (HR 35), co-sponsored by 66 of the 88 Assembly members, which passed by a voice vote in 2012.

The resolution purports to be in opposition to anti-Semitic activities on university campuses, yet defines "anti-Semitism" so broadly as to include student activism targeting certain policies of Israel's right-wing government as well as professors and others who acknowledge certain well-documented war crimes committed by Israeli forces.

Obama’s speech last week Friday - billed as his “reforms” of the NSA’s universal warrantless surveillance in which he actually describes Paul Revere as an early “secret surveillance” agent – are not reforms any more than a criminal who has been systematically breaking into your home and snooping into every aspect of your life is reforming what he’s doing when he says, after being caught red-handed, that he’s going to continue doing what he’s been doing, but he’s going to be neater about it:

“Instead of looking into three layers of your records, I am only going to go two layers deep.”

It’s as if this burglar, in justifying his actions, told you that he is actually the neighborhood watch captain and that in order to prevent criminals from breaking into homes and harming the residents, he must continue to look for criminals by breaking into everyone’s homes constantly, in case one of the residents is secretly a burglar.

Now assuming that you are still calmly listening to this absurd explanation from this thief with unbelievable chutzpah that you have in front of you, you might then be moved to ask him something like this: “Don’t the police have the fingerprints and a description of the gang that broke into that house down the street back in 2001? Why aren’t you trying to find that gang and their associates? Why are you treating every single person on this street as suspects?”

Here is the video from the last stop of the Close Guantanamo Now National Tour, January 17, 2014 at the University Theater at Cal Poly Pomona. Andy Worthington and Dennis Loo made up the panel and there is a lively and interesting Q & A after their prepared remarks. An audience of approximately 240 attended. Strongly recommended. You will hear material and analysis that appears nowhere else. Runs slightly over 1:26. (Due to necessary battery changes during the program, a small amount of material was unable to be recorded.)

This site draws substantial traffic and we very much appreciate that fact. For some reason, however, very few individuals choose to leave comments. As we say in our comments section, "we find truth via contention." If you're devoted to the pursuit of truth and want to see it prevail, then posting comments and engaging in the lively back and forth that could happen here would contribute to that endeavor.

When so very much of what passes for the public discourse today involves active efforts to mislead and deflect from the truth, and where immoral and unscientific arguments and policies characterize so much of public policy, imperiling the very fate of the planet, forming a community of people who regularly leave comments and engage in conversation with one another is something that could serve as a rallying point for everyone who wants a different present and radically different future. If you look at the comments section at The New York Times, for example, you will find a lot of very well-informed and thoughtful people who frequently leave interesting and illuminating comments, but the center of gravity of most of those discussions inevitably revolves around the parameters of the NYT articles themselves, limiting how deeply and comprehensively the collective discussion can be.

NBC is reporting today, based on an Oxfam report released on Monday entitled "Working for the Few," that the richest 85 individuals in the world now have more wealth than the bottom half of the world, 3.5 billion. This is a further shift into an even tinier number of hands of what was as of a few years ago - the richest 497 individuals held more than the bottom half of the world's population put together.

According to the report, 210 people have become billionaires in the past year, joining a select group of 1,426 individuals with a combined net worth of $5.4 trillion.

It added that the wealth of the richest one percent of people in the world now amounts to $110 trillion, or 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world's population.

I have an article waiting in the wings to publish that's on hold because for some reason we can't get the tweets that I want to display in the article to display properly. Only the html code shows up. In the meantime, I can't help but show you the content of one of the latest tweets in a little fight that's going on over GTMO between myself and a group of military folks.

In response I've been accused by people who haven't bothered themselves to actually read my talk of being an "Islamist apologist," a "really bad guy," an anti-American, and other such things. Why confuse yourself by finding out what the person you're arguing against and insulting is actually saying by reading an article by him? Life is so much simpler if you avoid that.

Update at end. This post was delayed for two days due to technical problems with displaying tweets properly.

There’s a little bit of a twitter war going on today (1/19/14), sparked by one of my tweets yesterday.

Twitter war might be too strong a term. Call it a twitter fracas.

Someone named Montgomery Granger and his friends have been tweeting furiously back. None of my so-very-patriotic critics show any evidence that they've actually read the article that my tweet is announcing. If they have read beyond the article's title and basic description, they haven't tried to engage the facts and line of reasoning in it whatsoever. That is the way, by the way, that adjudicating differences between people in pursuit of the truth should be carried out: take what the other person's actually saying and respond to it. In fact, take the best expression of what they're saying because if you are interested in the truth as opposed to just winning the argument, then you owe it to the truth to take the best that the other person's putting forward, because there's always the possibility that they might have something true to say and that you can learn from it.

Since my twitter critics today haven't bothered to engage my actual article, let me do take the next available option and engage their tweets' substance.

Here's Granger, for example, convinced that I'm an "Islamist apologist," reacting to my point - that his claims that these detainees are all guilty of war crimes can't be supported unless the detainees are actually charged, let alone tried and convicted. (Note: To determine whether someone should be subject to detention, they have a right (habeas corpus) to ask that the government that's holding them provide reasons before a judge why the prisoner should be held. Otherwise, they should be let go and not detained for years on end or decades, as is the case for many of them, without being even charged):

.@denniswcw .@SgtTim911 Habeas doesn't exist in vacuum. Unlawful combatants BROKE Law of War & are NOT entitled to rights as if they didn't.

So how does Granger know that these "unlawful combatants BROKE Law of War" if they've never been charged?

Because military authorities told him so by imprisoning these individuals in the first place? Because that's why the Bush Regime chose GTMO in the first place? At GTMO the USG would have the best opportunity to make certain that it was only holding the "worst of the worst," right? Locating the prison in the US itself would not be as conducive to only holding those for whom you had sufficient evidence until they could be tried. That's why the US government chose GTMO because they thought the detainees would be more likely to be treated properly as detainees there than in the US itself, right?

Or perhaps Granger KNOWS that these prisoners "BROKE Law of War" because his president told him so?

As I point out in the article that Granger hasn't apparently read, Obama asserts that everyone taken to GTMO is a "terrorist" even though he refuses to allow any of them their habeas corpus rights so that the government may show at least the semblance of evidence that there might be enough pointing to the basis for them to stand trial.

"GTMO has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law."

Look, however, at the very next sentence in this speech:

"Our allies won’t cooperate with us if they think a terrorist will end up at GTMO."

This sentence and the one preceding it are an example of having your cake and eating it too. Obama says that GTMO is a bad symbol because it shows the world that the US flouts the rule of law thereby showing what a respecter of the rule of law he is, then in the very next sentence he does exactly what he was criticizing, flouts the law, by declaring definitively that those sent to GTMO are “terrorists.” How do you know they’re terrorists Mr. President? Because you’ve paid millions in bounty payments for those turned in as alleged “terrorists?” How do you know they’re terrorists if they’re been denied a habeas corpus hearing to have any evidence that alleges such is produced before a judge?

To our true blue Americans, guilt by virtue of accusation alone is sufficient. They must be fans of Lewis Carroll's Red Queen's famous declaration: "Sentence first - verdict afterwards."

As I wrote in a Counterpunch article after the 2008 Republican National Convention when peaceful anti-RNC protesters were arrested before they even had a chance to demonstrate and absurdly and fascistically charged with being "domestic terrorists" - a pre-emptive suppression of free speech and assembly:

Of what significance can a person’s right to see the charges leveled against them be when there’s a war on terrorists to be waged? What need do people accused of crimes have to see who has accused them – are they not guilty by virtue of being accused? What end is fulfilled to allow the accused to cross-examine their accusers? Why waste the court’s time with such absurdities? What purpose does it serve to have perfectly good evidence ruled inadmissible, so what if it was extracted employing electric shock and waterboarding? These people are guilty, guilty, guilty! Why just look at them: do they not look guilty? What more evidence do we need? 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! We must wring the truth out of them, whatever it takes, the preservation of freedom demands it!

These fulminations by those who wrap themselves in the flag so tightly that their brains are starved for oxygen actually stem not mainly from their lack of intelligence but mainly from the character of neoliberalism's public order policies that treat everyone as a suspect and criminalize whole categories of people and forms of behavior. You no longer have to do anything suspicious to be treated as a potential or actual criminal. This is the underpinning, for example, for authorities' destruction of the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions against warrantless searches and the requirements of probable cause. These impassioned patriots are merely parroting the lines that authorities have been feeding everyone.

Here's another tweet, from a Tim Sumner, who makes sure that no one misunderstands his stance by posing in front of an American flag. Sumner's tweet bio says this: "Co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America. US Army ret. Co-host of Freedom Radio. In the War on Terror, there is no place to run from here."

@denniswcw@mjgranger1 Our enemy has no withdrawal date from this war us. Our Constitution & common sense says no due process.

This one had me nearly on the floor with laughter. "Our Constitution and common sense says no due process." But of course "Our Constitution" doesn't guarantee due process. It says something else. Not sure what. Perhaps he's referring to the 3/5 of a person part about slaves, or the exclusion of women from being recognized as entitled to a vote? If so, then the man might have a point!

So this is what I said in response:

@SgtTim911@mjgranger1 Principles aren't just for some - they're for all - otherwise they're not principles at all.

Mr. Sumner’s stand on this – that rights are only for Americans and not for anyone else – is the very essence of reactionary reasoning. In contrast to his deceitful reasoning, rights are not really rights if they’re reserved for only some and not for everyone. “We’re Americans and we’re better than non-Americans because we treasure liberty and freedom. We’re not tyrants like those other people. When we detain people we do it better and we don’t have to treat people according to the Geneva Conventions because THEY broke the law and THEY cut off people’s heads and we’re magnanimous. We’re the good guys, you see, and the good guys don’t have to treat everyone the same."

The point is apparently lost on Mr. Granger that it's the VERY FACT of detention without any right to challenge their detention that is at issue here. As for the alleged “we’re the good guys,” anyone watching Yasiin Bey’s attempt to go through the force-feedings that Obama has ordered used on the hunger strikers, can’t help but recognize what a lie Granger is perpetrating. Moreover, as I pointed out to him early on, 86% of GTMO detainees were turned in for millions of dollars in bounty and only 5% were even actually captured on the battlefield by US troops:

@mjgranger1@SgtTim911 86% of those @ GTMO turned in 4 bounty. 5% captured on battlefield. Study what's going on before you sound off.

This line of reasoning, if you can even call it reasoning since it sounds more like a child’s ravings when he’s losing an argument and he casts about every possible way to try to wiggle out of the predictment of being obviously wrong, is the stuff of fascism. Their attitude, plain to see, is that Muslims like those at GTMO “are an enemy by virtue of our designating them an enemy and that means that they’re not entitled to being treated according to international laws and due process.” The circularity of their reasoning doesn't phase our brave patriots who will dare to tread where reason refuses to go.

It’s very simple in this respect to distinguish between fascists and those who consistently honor and respect the indispensably core principles of justice and fairness: which ones are willing and eager to suspend due process because the ones they’re suspending it for “a really bad guys?” As Sinclair Lewis put it in 1935: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible.”

@denniswcw@mjgranger1 I should rephrase that. Tyranny out of chaos is your goal, universal rights the antithesis of unalienable rights

Sumner's tweet is a response to my post "Universal Rights = Leftwing Propaganda?" According to Sumner, "universal rights" are not the same as and are inferior to "inalienable rights." Inalienable means that they may not and should not be deprived from people. But apparently, it IS alienable to aliens like Muslims and others determined by bounty payments:

Paying out millions for bounty accounting for 86% of those detained at GTMO. That for sure PROVES that these are not goatherders but terrorists! We don't even need to charge them to know this. We KNOW IT. So THIS is what Mr. Granger means by his authoring "Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay," the first line on his Twitter bio.

The manner of collecting evidence of anyone who is trying to solve a puzzle or track a criminal is the same. What you want is not more information. Too much information gets in the way. What you want and need is more relevant information.

In this week’s HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher episode, Maher interviewed Glenn Greenwald from long distance. Greenwald lives in Brazil and is, by the way, trying to find out from the US government whether he can safely travel to and from the US any more given the furor kicked off by his assistance as a journalist in making some of Edward Snowden’s revelations available to the world. Some prominent figures have called for Greenwald’s head for, can you believe it, doing what journalists are supposed to do?

During his interview with Greenwald, Maher said that Edward Snowden has done good things – for example, Obama would not be commenting about the NSA spying without it – but sometimes Snowden says some “batshit crazy” things.

Maher’s examples of Snowden’s “crazy” talk are that a) the mass warrantless surveillance doesn’t have to do with anti-terrorism and 9/11 per se but is designed for social and political repression, and b) the government can trace who you were friends with and associate with far back in time as long as it holds onto this data.

Greenwald’s response to Maher was that “what’s crazy is that you think that’s crazy” and proceeded to give some examples of what the NSA has been doing.

This is the text of Dennis Loo’s prepared remarks at the Close Guantanamo Now national tour’s last stop on Friday, 1/17/14, at the University Theater, Cal Poly Pomona, before an audience of approximately 240 people. A videotape of the entire event, featuring Andy Worthington and Dennis Loo, and a very useful Q & A, will be available next week.

Note to readers of DennisLoo.com: This site draws quite a lot of readers but only rarely are readers leaving comments. Many sites with far less traffic are routinely getting a lot of comments. This is a puzzle, even places where Dennis Loo's articles are being reposted get comments but not here at DennisLoo.com. If those of you who visit would start to leave comments this would encourage others to do the same and a really interesting conversation could take place and a sense of community could be fostered. So please consider leaving comments, whether in agreement or disagreement. Thank you very much!

Why is GTMO still open? Why was it opened in the first place? What can and must we do about this?

First, some geographical and historical background: Guantanamo Bay is on Cuba’s southeastern end, separated by high hills from the rest of the island. The US seized Guantanamo Bay in the aftermath of the 1899 Spanish-American War. Overriding the Cuban government’s wishes to have Guantanamo back under their control, the US continues to maintain an indefinite lease over GTMO.

Why has Obama not reversed the Bush Regime's "national security" policies, policies that he explicitly claimed to reject and would reverse if elected? The answer, put simply, is that the process of running for the White House is in part an exercise in getting voters to believe in you and follow you - and deceitfully promising them things they desire is vital to accomplishing that - and partly it is an exercise in getting the PTB to accept you and trust that you will actually do what they need and expect. This means that you must promise the public things that are directly contrary to what the PTB demand and you must find ways to explain away your failure to deliver on your public promises while still retaining your social base's allegiance.

When the dominant paradigm is the “War on Terror” and when the gains to be had from continuing this war are as extraordinary as they are—booty in the trillions of dollars overall and the reins of political power of an empire—then any strategically placed individual or group could take advantage of this condition by suppressing information about an upcoming terrorist incident, by allowing an incident to happen that could have been prevented, or by manufacturing a fall guy to carry out an attack, and get away with it. The GOP, Democrats, and the mass media, after all, have ruled raising questions about the wisdom or effectiveness of the “anti-terrorist” measures out of order. The traditional safeguards, such as the separation of powers that are supposed to prevent such a cynical ploy from being carried out, have been eliminated.

If this sounds hard to believe, consider the fact that Bush and Cheney were caught red-handed fabricating the WMD excuse to invade Iraq, and they were still not impeached. They were caught red-handed torturing people, at least one hundred of them to death, and they were still not impeached or prosecuted. They were caught red-handed spying on every single American in felonious violation of the law, including every senator, congressperson, prosecutor and judge, and they were still not impeached or prosecuted. If these transgressive acts were not punished but were retroactively approved with their underlying excuses endorsed by both major parties, then it should be no surprise that these policies would then continue. Is it any wonder, then, that Obama has been continuing their policies and in some very important respects going even further? The wonder would be if he actually attempted to put a stop to it all.

— Globalization and the Demolition of Society, pp. 152-153.

Over time, those who stay faithful to officials who have reneged on their promises, making excuses for these officials' outrageous lies and crimes, and accepting that which they previously considered unacceptable, ensure that the other aim of those in power has been achieved: the progressive rape of the public's conscience, turning the people into colluders in war crimes.

Tonight - Friday, 1/17/14! Hear Andy Worthington and Dennis Loo in the final stop of the national Close Guantanamo NOW Tour at the University Theater, Cal Poly Pomona, 3801 W. Temple Ave., Pomona, CA 91768, 7 - 9 pm.

When a harmless and innocent young homeless person like Kelly Thomas can be brutally murdered by licensed killers, their murderous actions all captured on tape, but these murderers’ actions are legitimated by innocent verdicts, then something is seriously wrong.

When a British jury can find that a biracial man, Mark Duggan, had no weapon on him but it’s a “legal killing” when he’s gunned down by the police because the police can always claim that they felt threatened – because after all, it’s a black man, don’t you see? – and the jury buys this, then something is seriously wrong.

When Trayvon Martin, a young black teen minding his own business, can be executed by a self-appointed neighborhood watch vigilante named George Zimmerman, and a jury, following a judge’s decision that “racial profiling” had nothing to do with the case, sets Zimmerman free, something’s seriously wrong.

When Oscar Grant can be be held down by a BART cop, co-operating fully and committing no offense, yet still be shot in the back and killed, and his murderer exonerated on his claim that he thought he was using his taser and not his gun, then something’s seriously wrong.

Kelly Thomas is the schizophrenic homeless young man who was brutally beaten to death by three officers for putting his hands on the ground instead of on his knees. A jury has just found two of his killers who were charged not guilty. The third uniformed murderer was not tried.

I will have more to say about this outrageous case of officially sanctioned murder and related matters, but for now I'm going to post three comments about this case from the LA Times' website. What these readers are pointing to about the worship of the US police state is very accurate. This incident and others like it are directly connected to the war on terror and its immoral logic: that authorities may do anything and everything to supposedly "protect" the people. This includes killing and torturing people, something that goes on every single day in our US prisons, here and abroad, and by men in uniform riding roughshod over the people, given licenses to kill.

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ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:51:02 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/kelly-thomas-killers-walk.htmlOn Public Speaking and the Golden Globeshttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/on-public-speaking-and-the-golden-globes.html
On Public Speaking and the Golden Globes

By Dennis Loo (1/13/14)

I watched some of the Golden Globes last night. The awards show is paid attention to not because of who is doing the voting (the relatively small number of Foreign Press Association members) but because it is the last major awards show before the Oscars and therefore tends to predict the Academy's choices. (Delightfully, even though Jessica Chastain won for Best Actress in the Globes last year for playing CIA torturer/interrogator Maya in Zero Dark Thirty, those of us who were trying to discredit the pro-torture/pro-CIA faux documentary style message of ZDT were able to turn the tide against the film between the Globes and the Oscars and it got only a shared minor award at the Academy Awards).

What struck me in general about the awardees' acceptance speeches last night was that the people who are among the very best in the world at appearing before others, have trouble speaking extemporaneously. Jacqueline Bisset is taking the most heat for this, but nearly everyone else also had trouble speaking without a prompter. What actors are good at is delivering lines that others have written. They are amazingly good at taking on the persona of the person they're dramatizing. It's a special talent and one that humanity values tremendously. But have them have to speak on the spur of the moment before a crowd and most of them have as much trouble as the rest of us do.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 13 Jan 2014 18:25:32 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/on-public-speaking-and-the-golden-globes.htmlThe Obama Doctrine and the Seduction of the American Publichttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-obama-doctrine-and-the-seduction-of-the-american-public.html
The Obama Doctrine and the Seduction of the American Public

By Dennis Loo (1/10/14)

A number of my students have asked me why Obama is not closing GTMO, given his statements that he wants to, given the fact that it is within his power as POTUS to do so, and given the extremely negative consequences keeping it open have for the U.S.’s reputation in the world. The reasons for his ongoing failure to close it I suspect include at least two elements. First, Obama’s record in public political life is that he rarely steps outside what is considered the political mainstream even while he protests that he is on the side of the angels in his desires. Obama’s tendency is to appease and “reach across the aisle” to reactionaries (aka the GOP) while trying to mislead his social base as to what he’s doing and why. Obama, in other words, is a political coward whose political career has been fueled by his truly exceptional ability at carrying out the system’s needs while disarming the public about what he is actually doing.

Second, and more importantly, Obama is the public face and the actual head of the U.S. imperialist empire. That empire operates under the working logic that in order to accomplish its aims it must show all potential critics and rivals that it will stop at nothing to suppress any challenges to it, including the savage use of torture to intimidate and drones overhead striking down both actual rivals and even innocents who are in the wrong place at the wrong time (i.e., living and going about their lives in the places where they live). For state terror to work it must operate in the same manner that anti-state terror does: you are supposed to be afraid that you could be the next arbitrarily and capriciously chosen victim of terrorism so that you will abide by what the terrorists – anti-state and state terrorists alike – want. -- ­“Obama: Appearances v. Reality,” May 25, 2013

There is a particular way that Obama operates that needs to be understood. His entire political persona rests upon presenting himself as being on the side of the people while behind the scenes delivering to those who really run things the policies and practices that they rely upon and serving the American empire’s interests. This is how Obama became a US Senator and how he became the first black US president – by opportunistically taking advantage of his tremendous facility at simulating a persona that many others could read into what is not actually there.

In response to this tour and these efforts to shut this prison, set up by the Bush Regime in an attempt to escape national and international laws barring indefinite detention and torture, today Fox News published an attack on the anti-Guantanamo forces.

Obama promised during his 2008 campaign for the presidency that if elected:

“We will lead in the observance of human rights, and the rule of law, and civil rights and due process, which is why I will close Guantanamo and I will restore habeas corpus and say no to torture. Because if you elect me, you will have elected a president who has taught the Constitution, who believes in the Constitution, and who will restore and obey the Constitution of the United States of America.”[1]

The clear flouting of these principles by his predecessor led so many to feel such relief to hear these promises and experience great joy when Obama was elected. Elation, however, was unwarranted.

Six years later, Guantanamo remains open with no reasons other than the wisps of more high-sounding but empty phrasemaking by Obama to expect it to ever close. Bagram, much larger than Guantanamo, remains open. CIA torture and detention sites remain open in undisclosed locations despite the Obama administration’s public declarations of denial. Habeas corpus has not been restored and torture continues, including through gruesome force feedings.

Rather than reverse the Bush Regime’s judicial stances, the Obama Administration has reinforced, renewed and expanded upon those stances.

BA Speaks: REVOLUTION--NOTHING LESS! (first hour of Disc 2), DeNeve Plaza Room. Part of a series of screenings during the academic year. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Academic Advancement Program, the UCLA Office of Residential Life, and Revolution Books.

When people talk about politics and culture and their connection to each other, the most common argument goes like this: a country’s politics reflect its culture. In the US this frequently takes the form of people arguing that individualism and the American Dream, two prominent features of American culture, are durable and determining aspects of American political life. No public policies and no political movement can succeed that run contrary to the pursuit of individual material wealth. Or so the conventional wisdom goes.

While there is no question that individualism and the American Dream are prominent aspects of American culture, there are two problems with this perspective.

First, culture itself is contradictory. Every culture is. To take this on the broadest level first: no society, including American society, can in fact operate as a society without co-operation being overall the most important aspect. By definition a society only exists in the first place because everyone except the tiniest fraction of outliers co-operate with one another. Those few outliers are either ejected from other social groups (and suffer for this, including the most severe cases by being incarcerated or by execution), or their talent(s) are so socially valuable that their idiosyncrasies are tolerated, even as they are disliked for their distressingly anti-social behaviors.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 07 Jan 2014 03:34:24 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/culture-and-politics-culture-s-important-but-culture-s-contradictory.htmlRadically Different Paths for Humanity and the Planethttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/radically-different-paths-for-humanity-and-the-planet.html
Radically Different Paths for Humanity and the Planet

By Dennis Loo (1/2/14)

Before getting to the heart of this, first, a bit of background. When I was a young person just entering Harvard College, I had a dream of becoming something like US Secretary of State. I planned to go to Harvard Law School and then make my way to Washington, D.C. I didn't want to run for political office because that seemed much too phony to me because I'd have to shake hands with everyone, kiss babies, and say things I didn't really mean. So serving in an appointed position but impacting public policy seemed more realistic. Eventually I realized that as a Chinese-American the idea that I would serve in such a high office in the US was a pipe dream. I am slightly embarrased to disclose these naive youthful ambitions at this point.

A lot of things happened to me on my way through college. The 1960s happened. While my first reaction to it was that student activists were a little far out there and pursuing unrealistic goals, the force of those massive and determined protests and my own studies about the actual carrying out of public policy (e.g., the US' defoliation campaign in Vietnam, the Interior Department's war on the prairie dog, even though there was no evidence that prairie dogs were harming the cattle industry, and the reason why education was not focused on the joy of learning but the external rewards of grades - because it was preparing people to live and work in an alienating economic system) all came together. It made me alter my planned life-course radically when I realized the reality of what this system does and the fact that it is a system. The wealth and personally powerful life-path that I could have pursued now seemed irresponsible and immoral to me.

Time shows that things that once seemed mysterious can yield up their secrets before the power of experience and to greater insight into how things work. Life, nonetheless, remains complex and it will remain so forever. This is going to continue to be true in part because processes both natural and artificial are intricate and complicated. In human relations, for example, negotiating group and individual behaviors and attitudes requires being able to recognize and use nuance, a complexity that contradicts thinking in simplistic terms such as good versus evil. Moreover, everyone has within them contradictory aspects; no one is purely good or evil. If you want to work with others then recognizing that everyone has contradictory elements within them is necessary.

Correctly handling the relation between the individual level and the group level is also crucial. Reducing the operations of institutions and societal level phenomena to individual decisions and individual personalities and treating structural outcomes as due primarily or solely to individuals is foolish. And yet even highly educated people such as professors commonly engage in this kind of faulty reasoning, particularly when they are talking or thinking about political affairs. For the record this mistake is called the Fallacy of Attribution: the notion that group level behavior can be understood on, and as a result of, the individual level. Group level phenomena have their own dynamic, separate from, though overlapping some with, individual level phenomena.

If you donate today or tomorrow you can get a tax deduction for 2013. Please give generously and spread the word.

If, as Obama says, "the war on terror" is winding down, why will this government not close Guantanamo? Five years after Obama's first promise to close Guantanamo, it remains open. Now the prisoners are so desperate, they would rather starve themselves on a hunger strike than "live" in the torture of indefinite detention. What is our responsibility to see that this immoral prison closes once and for all?

With expert testimony from UK journalist Andy Worthington and challenging analysis from Debra Sweet, director of World Can't Wait, the tour will begin in New York City and go to Washington DC to join in protests at the White House demanding the immediate closure of Guantanamo. From there it will go on to the San Francisco Bay Area and southern California. The tour will hit key college campuses, reaching law students and a whole generation of young people who have never heard the stories of the Guantanamo prisoners.

If you are outraged at the fact that Guantanamo IS still open and want to help get the truth out to many more people, please DONATE now to get this tour on the road.

More on Guantanamo

As Guantanamo Bay enters its 13th year, 78 prisoners who were cleared for release years ago are still unjustly imprisoned. Prisoners have gone on hunger strike to protest their conditions, drawing international attention to the outrage of Guantanamo. The U.S. military has now declared that it will not release any information to the media or the public about the prisoners on hunger strike.

It is on people living in this country to make sure that the voices of the prisoners are heard and that we shut down Guantanamo Now. When you donate to this tour, you are amplifying the voices of these courageous hunger strikers!

What Is Needed:

$2,500 will cover travel expenses and enable us to show "Doctors of the Darkside" as part of this tour. We have co-sponsoring organizations covering the cost of venue rental and student organizations excitedly promoting the events.

This ambitious tour will not be a success without YOUR contribution. The “new normals” of our world are not acceptable. It is up to the people to stand up for principle and morality when their institutions and public officials refuse to do so. Your donation will go to work right away helping show that there are people in this country who value the lives of people in other countries and reject as illegitimate the crimes being done in our name here and around the world.

Lorde (aka Ella Yelich-O’Connor, a 17-year-old new pop star from New Zealand) and PSY (Park Jaesang, a Korean pop star most famous for his smash hit Gangnam Style) are examples of the fact that what popular culture (read: mainstream, read: market moguls’ dominated) is does not necessarily mirror the putative shallowness of its audience. Put another way, pop isn’t what it is primarily because that’s what the masses want it to be. It’s something else.

[S]he sings about middle-class kids bombarded by music-video fantasies of bling and luxury but responding, “That kind of luxe just ain’t for us.” It’s palatial-sounding pop that doesn’t condescend to listeners of any age. The song and her debut album brought Lorde four Grammy nominations — including song of the year — although she was inexplicably denied a fifth, for best new artist.

“Teenagers are more complex than people think,” she said via Skype from New Zealand.

In reflecting on 2013, I know many of you are thinking about where you can support real change. With pride, I sit on the Advisory Board of World Can't Wait. My name was alongside others -- perhaps yours -- in the Close Guantanamo Now Statement which ran in the New York Times as a full-page ad in May.

'Unwavering' and 'ahead of the curve' are how I describe this priceless organization and why I regularly join them in speaking out against the crimes of this government. I can count on World Can't Wait to stand with the people of the world; the most vulnerable, those whose lives are devastated by the crimes of this government.

I can count on World Can't Wait to take immediate action when new outrages are exposed and mobilize people quickly to speak out against wars of aggression like they did earlier this year spreading protests against war with Syria. I can count on them to stick to their mission no matter who the president is, running on all-volunteer energy and constantly going out to the people.

World Can't Wait runs on a shoe-string budget with my friend Debra Sweet, their director, receiving a very modest stipend. Yet they do remarkable things: publishing public ads, the first public forums after the NSA leaks, and showing up with replica Predator drones where they are needed the most to inform people.

During their end of year fund drive they work to support not only their ambitious projects such as the Close Guantanamo Now Tour (covering expenses like airfare, lodging, venue rental, and promotion) but also for their national office in New York City which does so much for those who want to take action to stop the crimes of our government.

No matter who you are or where you are...no matter if you can give $10 or $500, you are needed. World Can't Wait helps people act on their own conscience. I invite you to act on yours and donate generously to World Can't Wait.

Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern leads the “Speaking Truth to Power” section of Tell the Word, an expression of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A former co-director of the Servant Leadership School (1998-2004), he has been teaching there for 15 years. As an ex-CIA agent, he was in position to masterfully confront Donald Rumsfeld in 2006 on his lies about the US war on Iraq. World Can't Wait was glad to have helped arrange his presence at Rumsfeld's speech in Atlanta.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 25 Dec 2013 18:21:51 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/a-gift-you-can-give-of-enormous-significance.html“I have nothing to hide”: This is not about you. It’s about us.http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/i-have-nothing-to-hide-this-is-not-about-you-it-s-about-us.html
“I have nothing to hide”: This is not about you. It’s about us.

By Dennis Loo (12/22/13)

In response to the news that the US government is in fact spying on all of our electronic communications, movements, habits and associations, and literally much of the rest of the globe’s activities, and thus exceeding even the fictional dystopias of authors’ imaginations, many Americans say that they “have nothing to hide.”

Much could be said about this commonplace response, and I have previously addressed it in articles (for example, here, here, and here) and in a YouTube short.

What I want to hone in on this time is from a different angle – the fact that “I have nothing to hide” is a rather sterling example of individualism in the face of a truly massive collective threat. You cannot deal with a collective threat by treating it as if it’s merely an individual issue.

Caroline Diane Krass is now before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee seeking approval to become General Counsel for the CIA. The most contentious part of these CIA activities is its use of torture, both now under Obama and previously under Bush. In the course of her testimony, as The NYT reported today:

Under polite but persistent questioning by members of both parties, Ms. Krass repeatedly said that while the two congressional intelligence committees need to “fully understand” the legal basis for C.I.A. activities, they were not entitled to see the Justice Department memos that provide the legal blueprint for secret programs.

Ms. Krass tells the committees that they need to "fully understand" the legality of the CIA's activities, but they may not see the memos that set forth the legal justifications for said activities. This is the equivalent of saying: You must oversee what we're doing to make sure that they're legal, because it's your responsibility under the Constitution that you supervise these matters, but you may not see the rationales we are using in the CIA to carry out these activities.

In other words, "you have to trust us. It's legal, we assure you. Would we lie? Now, please be good Congresspeople and rubberstamp my nomination."

All systems have a doctrine that justifies their existence: their legitimation doctrine. Without a legitimation doctrine, a society could not sustain itself because some doctrine or other needs to bind people together and motivate people to stay within its orbit and operate according to its rules.

Capitalist societies’ legitimation doctrine is that higher class standing equals greater worth and that those who enjoy privileged status do so because they are more meritorious.

The corollary to this notion is that the primary (or exclusive) rewards for greater merit are material, not non-material.

This is how the American Dream operates: hard work and greater talent are supposed to produce greater material wealth. Alternatively, one can pursue the American Dream by buying lottery tickets or spending money at casinos and if you’re lucky, you’ll hit it rich and achieve the American Dream, not through hard work and talent but by luck.

Another path to the American Dream is through criminal activity: criminals crave the American Dream of riches and when successful, they sport all of the trappings of that wealth – big houses, expensive cars and clothes, young, good-looking, expensively attired partners, private schools for their children, and so on.

Inside Higher Education is reporting today that tenured Sociology Professor Patricia Adler at the University of Colorado at Boulder is being forced into retirement for a class lecture/discussion about prostitution. The course is about Deviance. Prostitution is a bread and butter part of any Deviance class. Indeed, the long-standing, half-joking way to describe sociology's treatment of Deviance is "Nuts, Sluts and Perverts." In the class session, which she has been doing for twenty years without complaint and to the highest of praise from her students, volunteer teaching assistants portray various kinds of prostitutes and are interviewed by the class to illustrate the different varieties of prostitutes and their life experiences.

As Inside Higher Education reported about this class of 500 students and the specific lecture that is the highlight of her signature course:

"Patti Adler's deviance class was the best class I have ever taken. In particular, the interactive prostitution lecture was the most memorable and informative lecture I have ever experienced. It was in no way offensive.... It was real," wrote one student on an online petition demanding that Boulder keep her, without barring her from teaching the deviance course.

On a Facebook page of students organizing a rally to condemn what is happening to Adler, another student wrote: "Patti has been one of the most influential people in my life. Not only has she taught me about how to view society, but she has helped me realize what really happens in this world. The prostitution skit was a learning experience, and the university needs to open their eyes if they have such a problem with what happens in the real world. Patti's passion for deviance and every other subject deserves to be preserved, and she is what a fantastic professor SHOULD look like. Let's make the administration feel like they made the biggest mistake they could."

After Adler broke the news to her class, many students were in tears, and they gave her a standing ovation, followed by many hugs.

One of the most common pro-capitalist tropes now is that the wealthy are the "makers" and the rest of us are the "takers." I first heard this on NPR coming from an economist. I have to wonder how an economist, particularly of his ilk, qualifies as a "maker," but this thought undoubtedly never crossed his calculating mind. He gleefully opined in this story about the uselessness of the "takers" like teachers, nurses, and firefighters. This story came to mind when I read today a very useful article at Alternet.org entitled: "7 Rip-Offs Corporations and the Wealthy Don't Want You to Know About."

Among the gems in this article is the fact that 69% of US corporations are not required by law to pay federal taxes. 69%.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 16 Dec 2013 20:18:46 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/takers-v-makers.htmlMegyn Kelly and the Politics of Entitlement and Resentmenthttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/megyn-kelly-and-the-politics-of-contentment-and-resentment.html
Megyn Kelly and the Politics of Entitlement and Resentment

By Dennis Loo (12/15/13)

After what she described as a “firestorm” response to her comments that both Santa and Jesus were “white,” and needing to take a sick day off to cope with it, Fox News’ lead blonde anchor (Faux News seems to have more blondes in one place than do the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders) Megyn Kelly fired back that she was just kidding and that people offended by her remarks are race-baiting.

“Humor is what we try to bring to this show, but that’s lost on the humorless,” Kelly said on “The Kelly File.” “This would be funny if it were not so telling about our society, in particular, the knee-jerk instinct by so many to race-bait and to assume the worst in people, especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News Channel.”

Let’s begin with her claim that she was joking. If you watch her make the comments that provoked people, it’s clear that far from being delivered “tongue-in-cheek,” Kelly was being very serious. Here are her actual words, and then the episode in question. In introducing the segment, here is her lead in:

"In Slate they have a piece on dot.com, Santa should not be a white person anymore, and when I saw this I kind of laughed, this is so ridiculous, yet another person claiming that it's racist to have a white Santa."

That sure does sound like she's joking, don't you think?

“Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change,” she declared confidently. “I mean, Jesus was a white man, too. He was a historical figure. That’s verifiable fact, as is Santa. I just want the kids watching to know that. But my point is, how do you just revise it in the middle of the legacy of the story, and change Santa from white to black.”

While there is not enough information at this time to definitively know what is happening, if one pieces together what has been reported from and about N. Korea and puts that together with what is known about how political power is exercised, certain things stand out.

Kim Jong-un’s uncle, Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s mentor and the second most powerful figure in N. Korea, was executed swiftly after a spectacular arrest and trial for allegedly plotting Kim’s government’s overthrow.

“I was going to stage the coup by using army officers who had close ties with me or by mobilizing armed forces under the control of my confidants,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency on Friday quoted Mr. Jang as having said on Thursday during his court-martial. “I thought the army might join in the coup if the living of the people and service personnel further deteriorate in the future.”

For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white. But this person is maybe just arguing that we should also have a black Santa. But, you know, Santa is what he is, and just so you know, we're just debating this because someone wrote about it, kids.

A little later in this segment she also states that Jesus was also white.

This is Part 2 of a series. The first installment “Individuality and Individualism” can be found here.

The spectrum of political opinion in the U.S. is customarily depicted as that between conservatives and liberals. In most people’s minds those ends of the spectrum are at least roughly equivalent to the Republican Party (conservatives) and the Democratic Party (liberals). The span between the two perspectives is the scope for what is considered legitimate and realistic differences of opinion – if you are outside of those parameters, then your views are seen as either too extreme or outside the pale and not to be taken seriously.

What is not well understood is just how much the GOP and the Democrats actually share; what the two of them share is far and away greater than what they differ on. I am speaking here principally of the leaders of both parties rather than the rank and file membership and particular individuals’ party affiliations and registration. Most people in this country align themselves with one or the other party or are Independents and while there are some significant differences among them (e.g., over gender and race), the underlying premises of conservatives, liberals and Independents share a substantially common origin.

Anyone who seriously undertakes the task of addressing the problems that confront humanity has to sooner or later come up against the problem and the question of bureaucracy. The sooner one recognizes this the better because anything you do that dodges or seeks to avoid this question is time largely wasted. Bureaucracies are the formalizing and concrete manifestation of the need to organize group activity. Group activity is the sine qua non of human existence since we are first and foremost social beings and can only continue to exist through our sociality. You cannot even be born but through groups, beginning with a couple of the opposite sex who are your (biological) parents. And you cannot survive and become human - since being human isn't a feature only of having human DNA but of being taught to be human - without groups, including the other person together with you who make up a group.

Bureaucracy, however, concentrates within it both the reasons why it is so powerful but also why it is such a danger. In the first part of this article I explore different dimensions to this, drawing upon the work especially of the foremost theorist of bureaucracy, Max Weber, and that of his student, Robert Michels. In examining their work I expand and develop certain aspects of it and in so doing lay the groundwork for a resolution to the problems that both Weber and Michels were unable to find.

Today's NYT approvingly cites Vice-President Joe Biden's speech in China on Thursday, “'Innovation thrives where people breathe freely, speak freely, are able to challenge orthodoxy, where newspapers can report the truth without fear of consequences,' he said in an address to American businesspeople living and working there."

I wonder if Biden simply forgot, when he was speaking of "where people breathe freely, speak freely, are able to challenge orthodoxy," about Chelsea (fka Bradley) Manning or Edward Snowden, or any of the other lesser known U.S. whistleblowers, who Obama and Biden have persecuted for daring to challenge orthodoxy and breathing and speaking freely?

Was Biden forgetting about what he said about Julian Assange's Wikileaks, which is as much a journalistic organization or more than any other that exists in the world today, for daring to "breath freely," in December 2010 on Meet the Press, calling him a "high-tech terrorist"? Perhaps Joe was suffering from ingesting too much MSG in China and temporarily lost his mind?

The following comes via Revolution Newspaper. What should make people wonder is how someone who is believed to have been such a hero on behalf of the oppressed is being lionized by people such as Barack Obama. How can he have been both a revolutionary hero and someone that Obama and others who justify using assassination and the entire apparatus of their coercive and persuasion apparatus, including torture and detention, also celebrate? Something is amiss here. As Dennis Loo wrote in Globalization and the Demolition of Society (2011):

The failure to recognize the central role of force in politics has drowned many a political struggle in blood or rendered it a failure through co-optation. The uprooting of regimes of domination and plunder cannot occur without a powerful struggle that includes, without exception, at least some degree of violence. The American Revolution against the British imperialists was not accomplished through a vote. The revolutionaries did not use tea to shoot at the British soldiers; they used bullets. The British did not say in response to numerous petitions from its colony, “Oh, all right, you want to be free, you shall be free. We’re leaving now. Best of luck, what?”

The end of apartheid in South Africa provides another instructive example. The white minority regime eventually ceded power in 1994 to a black majority but it did not do so without the African National Congress’ prior prolonged armed struggle. The eventual peaceful transition via negotiations for multiracial elections circumvented the necessary destruction of the mechanisms that had for so long violently subordinated the black majority. In the absence of that vital restructuring that cannot occur simply through substituting who is in high office, the condition for black South Africans has not been fully transformed and much suffering continues, except now under darker-skinned leaders.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 08 Dec 2013 23:16:19 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/on-nelson-mandela-s-death.htmlWhy Politics is More Than a Gamehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/why-politics-is-more-than-a-game.html
Why Politics is More Than a Game

By Dennis Loo (12/7/13)

Expanded 12/7/13 8:30 pm PST

Both those who follow politics and those who don't follow it are likely to agree that politics resembles a game. Partisans in this country who align themselves with either of the major political parties or with third parties tend to see things in terms analogous to how sports fans see their own teams and that of their rivals: horrah for my team (party) and boo for the other team (party). When the other team is offsides then the ref should have called it, but when my team is offside, well, they just weren't!

Trending for the last two days on Twitter, for example, is #LiesObamaToldUs. Among those tweeting are a fair number of GOP partisans who repeat the rightwing's favorite beating-a-horse-to-death themes - Obamacare, Benghazi, and Obama allegedly not being an American citizen or Christian or pro-capitalist. The tweets are mixed, however. Yesterday most that I saw (since there are so many, it's hard to know the exact proportions), including my own, were critical of Obama from the Left, for his violations of civil liberties, bailing out big business, persecuting whistleblowers while claiming he's for transparency, assassinating people with drones, and riding roughshod over due process and the rule of law. Some of Obama's defenders bemoaning the trending topic accused other posters of either being racists or of being naive about the fact that politicians lie. Apparently some people think that lying by their leaders is acceptable and nothing to tweet about since "they all lie." One might then wonder what such "realists" think about the fact that they are alright with being lied to all of the time and why they aren't up in arms about a political system that is merely a charade and aren't furiously demanding that things be made right. That their government is assassinating people, including hundreds of children, and has suspended the Fourth and to significant degrees the First Amendment, and is fiddling while the world burns from Global Warming, such folks seem okay about.

A society that equates material rewards with success and that relies upon material success to motivate people is also saying—and must say—that success equals having things that others do not have. This turns society into a zero sum game of winners and losers and structurally encourages a sense of entitlement among the “winners” that they are better than the “losers” and that they merit goodies and respect that should not be granted to the less deserving hoi polloi. Is this the meaning of a good society: the leaders think of themselves as so much better than everyone else? (Globalization and the Demolition of Society, p. 314)

All societies, past, present, and future require incentives to get people to work. It’s an inescapable fact of existence that we must labor in some form or another or we will starve. Even infants have to exert themselves to suckle on their mother’s breasts. The Garden of Eden has never existed and never will.

This fundamental fact, however, is almost always incorrectly equated with the rule of material incentives: the only way to properly motivate people is to dangle money in front of them and to threaten them with privation if they don’t chase after the money.

Everybody knows that capitalism promotes the greatest scope for individual expression and that communism does the opposite. Everybody knows that communist-led governments suppress individuality and everyone is supposed to be exactly the same, or at least receive exactly the same allotments. If you’re interested in freedom of thought and movement, then you must be a fan of capitalism (or libertarianism or anarchism) because it guarantees the greatest freedoms. Communism, on the other hand, will lead to and has led to the ruthless suppression of individuality; groupthink will replace the full flowering of individuality.

Or so goes the commonplace view.

Is the common wisdom actually correct?

Answering this question takes us into heady territory that involves grappling with some of the central practical and philosophical questions that humanity confronts.

In exploring and answering this question we first need to make an important distinction: the difference between individualism and individuality.

Individualism is an ideology that privileges and celebrates individuals over the group.

Individuality is the recognition that individuals are different from one another.

Individuality, in other words, is a fact. Anyone who fails to recognize or refuses to recognize that individuals are different is being absurd. Not only do individuals come in different sizes and colors, they are endowed with different abilities and interests, some of which are subject to a great deal of modification by environmental factors and some that are not.

Individualism, on the other hand, as an ideology, is a very different matter.

A core element of Obama’s legitimacy is tied to his promise to do things smarter and more competently. He has taken a huge hit as a result of his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare)’s humiliating rollout failure. His popularity levels are at their lowest ever.

I had been wondering why Healthcare.gov was rolled out when it clearly was not ready to function. This is all the more surprising given the primacy of the ACA to the Obama administration’s agenda and reputation. The New York Times’ article “Tension and Flaws Before Health Website Crash” seeks to address this.

According to the Times’ analysis, everyone involved in this debacle did things wrong. The man put in charge of this for the government, Henry Chao for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS), which was chosen to head this effort, has no formal training in software engineering and was not given the authority to make decisions.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sat, 23 Nov 2013 23:44:43 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/healthcare-gov-and-failure.htmlPolitical Power and Freedom and Necessityhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/political-power-and-freedom-and-necessity.html
Political Power and Freedom and Necessity

By Dennis Loo (11/22/13)

Contrary to common belief, political power does not arise from consent by the governed. The existing political system does not persist simply because people continue to believe in that system and falls apart if and when they lose that belief.1 Peoples' belief in the system's legitimacy does make up part of why things are as they are, but only one part.

Political power comes from two inter-related bases: coercion and persuasion. Both of these factors must exist for political power to be exercised. Political power requires that those who politically govern have the ability to compel compliance from those who cannot be persuaded and who refuse to go along, otherwise you do not have political power. The use of force is not just an attribute of political authorities who are tyrannical. It is an attribute of any and all governments. It grows out of the very nature of governance and more broadly out of the nature of societies that are divided by class.

Why is that?

Because there is a lot of confusion about these points it helps to discuss this in the most general sense to begin with. Obtaining unanimity is impossible in groups any larger than a relatively small number of people. Even in groups as small as two this issue arises. When, for example, your friend wants to do something different from you a decision has to be made about what to do. When disagreements among friends arise, if they want to remain friends, they decide to either compromise between their two opinions or adopt one person’s idea of what to do over the other’s idea.

When the stakes involved are far larger than whether two friends are going to go to the beach or to the movies then the need for some mechanism to ensure collective adherence is apparent. You cannot have a collectivity unless some means is available to ensure adherence if some part of the group cannot be persuaded to do so willingly. That means coercion. Coercion, in other words, is part and parcel of being in a group.

In my last article ("Setting the Terms") I referred to the very common practice by those who seek to bring about social change of more or less mirroring back to the majority what they already know and think. "Don't get too out ahead of people," these organizers advise. What is possible, according to that kind of activist, is more or less what is already going on, slightly accentuated.

I contrasted this practice to the fact that what the majority think and do is mainly shaped by what they see others around them doing. In other words, those who tail after spontaneity (mirror back to people what they already see themselves) are not even reading the problem correctly.

Conformity is more important than consensus: people tend to adopt the social norms of those around them, less because they all fully agree with those norms than that they are accommodating themselves to others’ behavior in order to fit in. Social psychologists call this ubiquitous social behavior “pluralistic ignorance.”

Those who are aware that things are awry in the world and want to see a different world see the extensive conformity around them and tend to wrongly assume that others’ conformity reflects consensus. They believe that they would therefore have to change the way people think in order to change the way they behave and they rightly hesitate at the seeming enormity of such a task.

One of the lessons from the 1960s that needs to be rediscovered by today’s activists and incipient activists is how those who step forward against the norm set the tone overall for everyone else and thereby change the norm.

One of the most frequent, if not the most frequent, complaints that one hears from those who are at least open to radical or revolutionary change is that “nobody else is doing anything.” While this complaint has some basis in reality, it fundamentally misunderstands the situation. The relative quiescence of most people isn’t primarily due to their relative lack of knowledge or apathy, even though those factors, especially the lack of good information, are a secondary aspect of the picture.[1] Rather, the situation we face is primarily due to the impact of the people who set the terms for everyone else: those in leading positions today adopt stances that guide others to accept what are profoundly immoral, unjust, and illegal policies. The political arena is shaped overall at this point by the two major parties and the media and what they present as the parameters of acceptable debate. Their largely falsified version of reality is a major part of the problem.

In the new NBC drama, The Blacklist, James Spader plays Raymond “Red” Reddington, a former government agent who becomes a master criminal, earning a spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

For reasons known only to him, he turns himself into the FBI and offers to help them catch the bad guys, on one condition, that he works only with Elizabeth “Liz” Keen, played by Megan Boone. Liz is puzzled by this and doesn’t know why Red is interested in her.

The reason is revealed to viewers obliquely in this week’s episode: Red is Liz’s real biological father, but the only person who knows this is Liz’s adopted father who is hospitalized with six weeks to live because his cancer has metastasized. After reminiscing with him warmly, Red smoothers him to death, to save him from the agony of dying from cancer or perhaps to keep him from revealing to Liz who her real father is.

One of the most peculiar - and telling aspects - of the Richie Incognito v. Jonathan Martin case in the NFL is the reaction of Dolphins players and other former players and coaches. To judge from their comments you would think that the victim in this case is Richie Incognito, not Jonathan Martin.

"I think Jonathan Martin is a weak person," said one personnel man, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "If Incognito did offend him racially, that's something you have to handle as a man!" .... What fascinates me is how quickly the conversation among players and personnel people turned from Incognito's actions to those of Martin, who has not spoken publicly since the story broke last week. Again, no one defended Incognito, but they did wonder why Martin didn't "man up" and handle the situation one-on-one. ... "This is another ploy in the league's 'player safety' book. Incognito knew who to try. You never heard anything like this come from John Jerry or Mike Pouncey. Instead of being a man and confronting him, he acted like a coward and told like a kid."

Poor misunderstood, non-racist Richie! His career as one of the NFL's dirtiest players might be over! Former wide receiver Cris Carter, for example, devoted his early commentary on this case to hoping that Incognito's reputation as a bigot could be cleared so that he could find his way onto some other NFL team.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 10 Nov 2013 17:15:07 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/gun-owners-of-america-broken-family-killed-trayvon-martin.htmlSystems and Individuals and the Source of the Problems We Facehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/systems-and-individuals-and-the-source-of-the-problems-we-face.html
Systems and Individuals and the Source of the Problems We Face

By Dennis Loo (11/9/13)

Among many of the more politically aware the sentiment is growing that corporations are the source of many of the multifaceted problems we face today. Rob Kall at OpEd News, for example, is calling for people to speak to this question, Chris Hedges has been writing about the evils of the “corporate state,” and many, if not most, of the people in the Occupy movement see corporations as the problem. It isn’t only within the political Left that this view is arising. Segments of the Right, such as some in the Tea Party movement, are also increasingly skeptical of corporations.

To put this question concisely: corporations are a feature of the problem, but not the source of the problem itself. If the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, for example, that conferred the rights of personhood on corporations so that they could exercise their First Amendment rights as “people” (and give unlimited amounts of money to their candidates, parties, and issues of choice) were overturned, this would be a good thing, but it would not really change the overall picture.

The problem is not corporation-hood but capitalism-imperialism. Saying that the problem is corporations and not making it clear that the real problem is capitalism and imperialism’s drive for profits and “expand or die” logic, is like saying that the skin that a poisonous snake is in at the moment it bites you is the problem and if we could just get rid of that skin! Snakes routinely shed their old skins for new ones and remain lethal biters throughout the skin-shedding process.

Corporations exist because capitalism exists. The causal sequence is capitalism, then corporations. Corporations are also a particular feature of imperialism, which is when the largest capitalist enterprises breach their national boundaries and go abroad to exploit labor, markets, and resources, and finance/banking capital becomes the economy's leading factor. Corporations do not exist as something anomalous within capitalism. They do not represent a distortion of capitalism but rather the logical outcome of the system-logic of capitalism and imperialism – the relentless and ceaseless pursuit of profit.

As much of the nation knows by now, the NFL's Miami Dolphins' left offensive guard, Richie Incognito, has been suspended indefinitely from the team for "conduct deterimental" in relation to his harassment of his left tackle rookie teammate Jonathan Martin. In late October Martin left the team to first go to a hospital for emotional distress and is now back home with his family in California. Martin is bi-racial and Incognito is white.

The Dolphins players who have spoken up about this so far have all sided with Incognito, claiming that this transcript of a message Incognito left in April for Martin does not indicate a racist and a bully:

Despite this message being a part of a larger body of harassment of Martin by Incognito subsequent to this April message, veteran and current players are all expressing sympathy for Incognito and not Martin, saying that either Incognito and Martin were the best of friends and/or that if Martin had a problem that he should have confronted Incognito and "punched him" as Dolphins' GM Jeff Ireland reportedly advised him to do. According to numerous individuals making public statements about this, Martin's "soft."

Over at The New York Times, Bill Keller, former Times’ Executive Editor and currently a Times’ OpEd Columnist, has posted a back and forth discussion between himself and Glenn Greenwald entitled: “Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?” The debate raises interesting questions not only about journalism’s past, present, and future, but also larger questions about how we arrive at the truth. The inception of the debate between the two came about because of the pending new media outlet that Greenwald is a central organizer for. Keller argues that Greenwald’s work and this incipient media outlet are not a good thing, on the grounds that the model that The Times represents – “impartial,” “objective” journalism – is better for journalism and for the public interest and that Greenwald’s advocacy journalism injures the pursuit of truth.

Readers should read the entire exchange between them. What I want to focus on here is the relationship between partisanship and truth, or to put it another way, the relationship between “objectivity” and truth. Greenwald rightly points out to Keller - who played a key role while Times’ Executive Editor as a “liberal hawk” in building the case for George W. Bush’s towering war crime of invading Iraq - that Keller’s claims to objectivity and impartiality are undercut by his American nationalism. Keller’s perspective as an advocate for U.S. interests in the world, in other words, makes his impartiality not impartial at all. It makes it instead a case of great power chauvinism.

This is Part 4 of the series Making a Radical Rupture with Conventional Thinking

One need only look at the news on any given day now to find evidence that there is a rising tide of intolerance and violent clashes, including fatal ones, in the world between those who regard others of different political views, cultural or physical attributes, sexual or religious orientation, etc., as the enemy, a threat to their very ontological existence. While violent clashes are not something new in the world, as world history is rich with such conflict, there can be no mistaking the fact that the trend now is towards rising violence, not less confrontation, and that reason and principled compromise with others is taking a backseat to these clashes. The violence originates overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) from those whose privileges and advantages are under challenge.

In what some might think is counter-intuitive, moral relativists who uphold the idea that everybody’s ideas should be treated equally are major contributors to this problem.

To summarize my case very briefly: moral relativists undermine unity by undermining the one basis upon which adjudicating differences between people can be accomplished - the empirical world of observable and determinable facts.

Note: This is from Corrente. These two pieces - here and here - make good companions to this wonderful interview. Notice the stark contrast between Paxman and Brand in where they're coming from and how they respectively express themselves. Paxman can only recite hackneyed phrases and arguments about the existing political system's legitimacy while Brand piercingly, passionately, convincingly and humorously shows how bankrupt the existing order is. This system, those who run it, and those who apologize for it have no leg to stand on when their rationales and policies are directly confronted by those who can see clearly what is really happening.

Russell Brand: Well, I don’t think it’s working very well, Jeremy, given that the planet is being destroyed, given that there is economic disparity of a huge degree. What are you saying, there’s no alternative? There’s no alternative? Just this system?

{youtube}3YR4CseY9pk{/youtube} posted by BBC Newsnight on October 23, 2013

TRANSCRIPTJeremy Paxman: Russell Brand, who are you to edit a political magazine?

Russell Brand: Well, I suppose like a person who’s been politely asked by an attractive woman. I don’t know what the typical criteria is. I don’t know many people that edit political magazines. Boris [London mayor Boris Johnson], he used to do one, didn’t he? So I’m a kind of a person with crazy hair, quite a good sense of humor, don’t know much about politics – I’m ideal.

ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 29 Oct 2013 17:37:33 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/russell-brand-interview-full-transcript-commentary.htmlOliver Stone, Peter Kuznick and The Untold History of the United Stateshttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/oliver-stone-peter-kuznick-and-the-untold-history-of-the-united-states.html
Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick and The Untold History of the United States

By Dennis Loo (10/27/13)

On Friday I attended a UCLA program with director Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick (Associate Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University) who showed Episode 3 from their Showtime ten-part series based upon their 2012 book, The Untold History of the United States.

The book and video explode major myths about the U.S., a kind of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States for foreign policy. As such, it’s a really welcome development and both Stone and Kuznick should be cheered for this.

Episode 3 concerns Truman’s dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW II. Stone and Kuznick show that contrary to Truman and others’ claims that dropping these weapons of apocalyptic power on two cities was necessary to force Japan to surrender and to save American lives, Truman used them to prevent the Russians, who had begun their invasion against Japan (in Manchuria), from being the ones to end the war. The atomic bombs, contrary to popular belief, did not actually cause Japan to surrender. Other Japanese cities had been previously subjected to massive and continuous bombardments and the Japanese government did not react to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as qualitatively different. The Russian invasion instead is what forced the Japanese to fold. Major military figures, from Gen. Douglas MacArthur on down are shown in the documentary as disapproving of the bombs’ use, saying that the atomic bombs were entirely unnecessary. Truman, on the other hand, was jubilant about the bombs’ use because he now had the biggest stick ever known to humankind for U.S. imperialist interests.

Kudos to actor/comic/writer Russell Brand for this BBC interview. Note the hackneyed complaints from his interviewer Jeremy Paxman that the only way to be serious politically is to vote and work within the existing system. Paxman's questions are a wonderfully insipid demonstration of the points I discussed in my last article. Brand does a great and powerful job in this delightful interview. A must see!

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 04 Dec 2014 05:02:10 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/russell-brand-calls-for-revolution.htmlWhy Democracies Aren’t Democratic – Part 3 of the Making a Radical Rupture with Conventional Thinking serieshttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/why-democracies-aren-t-democratic-part-3-of-the-making-a-radical-rupture-with-conventional-thinking-series.html
Why Democracies Aren’t Democratic – Part 3 of the Making a Radical Rupture with Conventional Thinking series

By Dennis Loo (10/21/13)

Democracy is what most people in this day and age say they want. A close examination of democracy’s precepts, however, reveals that democracies, even in their highest and best expression, cannot ever really be democratic. The problem is not that it’s a great theory and everything would be wonderful if the theory were fully implemented. Fatal flaws reside at the heart of democratic theory itself. The widespread undemocratic practices that seem to plague putative democracies are really a product of assumptions integral to democratic theory.

There are two major components to this.

The first has to do with the purposes of democracy. Is democracy an end in itself or a means to an end?

Very few people have ever had this question posed to them - whether democracy should be treated as an end in itself or as a means to an end - because democracy is invariably understood to be an end in itself. It’s taken-for-granted that as long as people have the right to vote, then whatever the outcome of their voting, democracy has been fulfilled by the fact of their voting.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 23 Dec 2015 19:21:09 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/why-democracies-aren-t-democratic-part-3-of-the-making-a-radical-rupture-with-conventional-thinking-series.htmlNational Day To Stop Police Brutality, Repression &amp; the Criminalization of a Generationhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/national-day-to-stop-police-brutality-repression-the-criminalization-of-a-generation.html
National Day To Stop Police Brutality, Repression & the Criminalization of a Generation

By Editors (10/19/13)

To build for Tuesday, October 22nd, which is National Day To Stop Police Brutality, Repression & the Criminalization of a Generation, a Twitter storm has been scheduled for today and tomorrow. See info following. The full pastebin can be found at http://pastebin.com/UTtKjdgt.

Peter Buffett, billionaire Warren Buffett’s second son, speaking of the philanthropic sector in a New York Times article says, “it’s time for a new operating system.” Buffett points to several factors that explain the ballooning non-profit sector’s failure to improve the conditions they are supposedly addressing, despite the rising donations. In fact, the very mechanism that he says thwarts the local level policy implementation of these non-profits reproduces and exacerbates the gross inequalities we see around us.

Today we have an era of philanthropy unseen before, yet as Buffett claims, this only coincides with the heightened inequality that parallels that of the “Gilded Age,” and as such is mixed with the guilty consciences of the ever-richer 1%.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sat, 19 Oct 2013 16:36:45 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/for-better-or-worse-philanthropy-s-failures.htmlWhat’s Coming: After the US Government Shutdownhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/what-s-coming-after-the-us-government-shutdown.html
What’s Coming: After the US Government Shutdown

By Dennis Loo (10/18/13)

The New York Times editorializes today regarding the end to the government shutdown and the prospects going forward:

Confrontational tactics failed the Republicans when Mr. Obama stood up to their demands, but rational negotiations — on ways to promote the public interest, not the agenda of interest groups — can still succeed.

…

No one is under any illusion that the vast differences between the parties have suddenly been bridged, [Obama] said, but the defeat of blackmail clears the way for a return to the traditional processes of democracy.

Before discussing the nature of both what the NYT editorial states and Obama, let’s first look at the left wing of the Democratic Party’s comments.

So the Republicans finally caved in the face of a disastrous default and allowed the shutdown to end. Note that the deal they reached today extends the sequester, the brutal budget cuts that are even more severe than what Rep. Paul Ryan proposed during his vice-presidential run as Romney's running mate in 2012.

The Tea Party representatives are not chastened but are warning that they have only begun to fight, so this is a hollow victory for the Democratic Party.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 17 Oct 2013 20:47:46 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/extending-the-sequester-austerity-worse-likely-to-come.htmlThe Gray Davis Lesson and the U.S. Government Shutdownhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-gray-davis-lesson-and-the-u-s-government-shutdown.html
The Gray Davis Lesson and the U.S. Government Shutdown

By Dennis Loo (10/15/13)

The inside story of Democrat Gray Davis’s tenure as Governor of California when Enron was manipulating energy pricing, leading to the Western Energy Crisis of 2000-1, is instructive with respect to the current U.S. government shutdown.

Before World War II, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) provided a foretaste of the global confrontation that eventually took tens of millions of lives, including twenty million alone in Russia.

If you were only looking, however, at the time at the particularities of the Spanish Civil War or of the Japanese invading China and not seeing how the political and economic forces in play were the leading edge of something even larger, then you would – as most did – miss the significance of these events.

Many people are similarly missing the full import of the U.S. government shutdown. They think that the GOP is committing political suicide with its extortionate tactics over ACA (aka Obamacare) and “entitlement” spending (aka social programs and needed programs like the FDA’s food inspections and scientific work re: global warming). They are misreading this political fight as one that will only damage the Republicans and benefit the Democrats and see the polls that indicate plummeting support for the Republicans as evidence of this.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 14 Oct 2013 14:44:55 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-dress-rehearsal-and-the-rolling-coup.htmlReaping What You Sow: the Radical Right, Fascist Norms, and the Futurehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/reaping-what-you-sow-the-radical-right-fascist-norms-and-the-future.html
Reaping What You Sow: the Radical Right, Fascist Norms, and the Future

By Dennis Loo (10/11/13)

If I could start a country with a bunch of people, they’d be the folks who were standing with us the last few days. Let’s hope we don’t have to do that! Let’s beat that other side to a pulp! Let’s take them out. Let’s chase them down. There’s going to be a reckoning! – GOP Rep. Steve King at a 2010 Tea Party Rally opposing the Affordable Healthcare Act in front of Congress

Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion … over our neighborhoods, our schools, our governments, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors – in short, over every aspect and institution of human society. – D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries Pastor, at a “Reclaiming America for Christ” conference in February 2005

We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them. – A Manifesto from Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation

The current government shutdown is a foretaste of the radical right’s deadly serious agenda to take sole power, irrespective of their increasing unpopularity and irrespective of the supposedly sacrosanct rules, principles, laws, and customary ways of doing things in this country. Their targets for overthrow include the Constitution’s separation of church and state as well as all of the institutions and arenas of society. This is their attitude, about which they are entirely sincere: “We want it all and we are not going to stop until we get it, because God’s on our side and anyone who stands in the way will be beaten to a pulp because we are the lambs of Jesus.”

As Robert Parry at Consortium News pointed out on October 9, the crisis in D.C. bears a strong resemblance to the CIA’s engineering of crises such as Chile in 1973 that brought on Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s fascist coup. Socialist President Salvador Allende, legitimately elected by popular vote, stood in the way of big capital in Chile and U.S. imperialist interests. A crisis was created in parliament and various faux populist protests were fabricated to stymie Allende’s policies, creating an economic crisis, paving the way for the “solution” by coup and draconian economic policies – the first implementation of the Chicago Boys (Milton Friedman’s guys at the University of Chicago) neoliberal (free market fundamentalism) policies. Those policies, after being imposed by bayonet and slaughter of thousands, were later brought to Britain and the U.S. and spread everywhere from there. As Naomi Klein famously pointed out, neoliberal solutions are frequently ushered in after crises are purposely provoked.

As Revolution newspaper further points out and analyzes at length, the U.S. government shutdown – not of the NSA or military occupations but of social services (e.g., providing urgently needed medical and other support for the poor and needy such as children), scientific work such as monitoring global warming in the Antarctic, and critical regulation such as monitoring the nuclear reactors for defects and accident - is the result of extortion by a small but heavily financed group within the GOP. While their popularity has taken a tremendous beating in polls, as their culpability is clear to most people, despite the “it’s both sides” rubbish that many in the media are characterizing this fabricated crisis as, this reactionary element has succeeded so far in bringing a crisis on. Its agenda isn't to win votes but to force their agenda down our collective throats.

Conventional wisdom has it that people who hold revolutionary views are outside the pale and not to be taken seriously. When examined closely, however, it is the ideas that underlie and justify the existing system that cannot be taken seriously. The main objective of this series is to show the indispensable value of revolutionary theory and place the onus on those who are against the idea of the need for revolutionary change and a revolutionary analysis to explain and justify their positions.

In Part 1 of this ongoing series, I explored different inter-related serious shortcomings of conventional thinking about politics and economics. Part 2 of this series explores the question of how and why stratification exists, and how Emile Durkheim, the author of Functionalist Theory that justifies social inequality, tacitly admitted an error in Functionalist Theory’s central premise. Those who rule our present society and those who benefit from high levels of inequality constantly invoke this premise. The consequences of pointing out that admission of error hiding in plain sight are briefly reviewed herein.

"If one acquires the habit of contemplating vast horizons, overall views and fine generalizations, one can no longer without impatience allow oneself to be confined within the narrow limits of a special task. Such a remedy would therefore only make specialization [the division of labor and existence of classes] inoffensive by making it intolerable and in consequence more or less impossible." – Emile Durkheim[1]

Durkheim was speaking here of the results of a higher education upon people from the working class. According to Durkheim, it’s necessary to avoid exposing workers to the best that humanity has to offer because doing so would make them unable to any longer accept being kept confined to capitalism’s highly constricted role for workers. To which I would ask: “And what would be wrong with that result, Emile?”

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 18 Oct 2016 18:07:25 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/making-a-radical-rupture-with-conventional-thinking-part-2.htmlMaking a Radical Rupture with Conventional Thinking Part Ihttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/making-a-radical-rupture-with-conventional-thinking-part-i.html
Making a Radical Rupture with Conventional Thinking Part I

By Dennis Loo (10/4/13)

If you want to actually have an impact on a societal level—a complicated endeavor—then you need analytical tools that are up to the task. You cannot possibly get such sophisticated tools by relying on the conventional wisdom dispensed via the ordinary organs of media and public officialdom. Does the advice we get on health care over the mainstream media give us enough scope, depth and detail to allow us to treat ourselves and be our own physicians? Certainly not. Why would political advice dispensed via mainstream media and existing governmental institutions be any better? Is it reasonable to expect that reliance upon the major parties’ campaign pitches and the injunction “just vote” could possibly be all you need to know to change society? The richest 85 individuals in the world have more wealth than the bottom fifty percent of the world’s population. If you had such extreme wealth and power and enjoyed your luxuries more than justice, would you let your possessions be subject to the whims of the principle of “one person, one vote?” Would you let your extraordinary wealth be outvoted? You would be crazy to do so. – Globalization and the Demolition of Society, (Pp. 23-24)

Even the most highly trained and experienced physicians will consult with other physicians on matters that involve their own health or that of others whose conditions have not improved based on the existing diagnosis and treatments. Even world-class experts would not attempt to treat cases that are not improving without such additional expert consultation.

Yet in so-called democracies, by contrast, we are told practically every day that the workings of our society as a whole and our political institutions in particular, are really very simple: everybody of voting age already knows what they need to know (i.e., they have the right and power of the vote) and have at their disposal the means – voting and contacting your political representatives - to fix what ails society.

How is it that in any every other human endeavor, people see the need for and routinely consult with experts – e.g., those wanting to become professional athletes or to win championships seek the guidance of the best coaches they can afford – yet when it comes to public policy and the allocation of resources for social needs and problems, the consequences of which spell life and death for millions, expertise is regarded as unnecessary? How is it that the inner workings and subtleties of every other activity except politics is something that is considered hard to discover, tough to learn, and exceedingly difficult to master? If Tiger Woods relied for his game wholly on what Golf Magazine’s monthly issues made available, would he be a multiple majors’ champion?

The music business doesn’t give a shit about you, or any of us. They will prostitute you for all you are worth, and cleverly make you think its what YOU wanted.. and when you end up in rehab as a result of being prostituted, ‘they’ will be sunning themselves on their yachts in Antigua, which they bought by selling your body and you will find yourself very alone.

None of the men oggling you give a shit about you either, do not be fooled. Many’s the woman mistook lust for love. If they want you sexually that doesn’t mean they give a fuck about you. All the more true when you unwittingly give the impression you don’t give much of a fuck about yourself. And when you employ people who give the impression they don’t give much of a fuck about you either. No one who cares about you could support your being pimped.. and that includes you yourself.

Yes, I’m suggesting you don’t care for yourself. That has to change. You ought be protected as a precious young lady by anyone in your employ and anyone around you, including you. This is a dangerous world. We don’t encourage our daughters to walk around naked in it because it makes them prey for animals and less than animals, a distressing majority of whom work in the music industry and it’s associated media.

On Thursday, Oct. 17th, a one hour excerpt from the first part of an important talk by the foremost revolutionary thinker in the world today, Bob Avakian, will be shown. The film will be followed by a one-hour Q & A in which Dennis Loo and Juan Gomez-Quinones will be discussants. KPFK's Michael Slate will moderate. The film will be preceded by food and refreshments from 5:30 - 6 pm. The Q & A will be followed by a reception from 8 - 8:30 pm. UCLA's DeNeve Auditorium seats 400 people. We urge people to come and to promote this among your colleagues, students, friends, classmates, associates, family and neighbors. Admission is free.

As a professor teaching materials on social movements, I would propose and ask the following:

BA Speaks: REVOLUTION - NOTHING LESS! is about a better world nothing less - a world we could imagine as better than this one. In this film BA (Bob Avakian) makes a call to consider the present and imagine the future differently from our everyday perspective, different from the angle of many of our usual teachers in required classes and required texts. This film is about us - nothing less.

If we stand back and see our society, the world on the news and even our own lives-we feel contradictory pressures of job, school or the environments, even our friends. In sum we feel the anxiety for the future: Will there be a future? We ask: What kind of future do I want? Why is there violence everywhere? Why does poverty spread and racism continue and why do more and more people engage in violence? In a class, we may ask: Why don't we ever discuss, even argue about the present or the future?

BA Speaks: Revolution - Nothing Less! offers you one set of glasses to see, offers you one voice to hear critically. It challenges you to be a real person along with other real persons willing to say a different, better world is possible. This stance and awareness is critical thinking, taking charge to end the madness of the world as it is, try changing yourself and the world."

*The title refers to a statement by someone who was at BA Speaks: Revolution - Nothing Less! Bob Avakian Live and related it to Plato's allegory of the cave "in which Socrates describes a group of people who have been chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing the stone" and only see the world in shadows, that's as close to reality as they come. The writer goes on, "Socrates tells us that the philosopher is like a prisoner freed from the cave, who can step outside, at last, in the freshness of truth, the real world. Bob Avakian's analysis breaks apart the small frame work in which we are manipulated." Read entire statement and what others are saying about BA and BA Speaks: Revolution - Nothing Less! at revcom.us

* * * * * * *

Dennis Loo, Professor of Sociology, Cal Poly Pomona and Author:

"As someone whose life course was also deeply impacted by the 1960s' social movements when revolution was 'on the table,' even if it did not occur in the U.S., BA's tireless and deeply scientific approach and illuminating contributions to putting revolution back on the table are something that need to be popularized widely. For those who suspect or explicitly know that things as they now are are not the only way that the world has to be, this call in BA's talk and work is exceptionally vital. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it's a matter of life and death for untold numbers of people and the fate more broadly of the planet."

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ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 06 Oct 2013 18:54:47 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/ucla-film-discussion-ba-speaks.htmlA Solution to the Liar’s Paradox and the Difference Between Being and Meaning, Part 1http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/a-solution-to-the-liar-s-paradox-and-the-difference-between-being-and-meaning-part-1.html
A Solution to the Liar’s Paradox and the Difference Between Being and Meaning, Part 1

By Dennis Loo (9/27/13)

The Liar’s Paradox has bedeviled philosophers, mathematicians, and logicians for more than two millennia. In possibly the earliest form of the paradox, in Ancient Greece, Cretan Epimenides declared, “All Cretans are liars.” The paradox, of course, is that his statement that all Cretans are liars cannot be true if he is always lying (since he’s a Cretan).

The paradox is best known in the form of “This statement is false” in which the same paradox arises. If the statement is true, then it’s false and vice-versa.

I’m going to offer a solution to the Liar’s Paradox here, but first some background.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 30 Sep 2013 20:56:40 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/a-solution-to-the-liar-s-paradox-and-the-difference-between-being-and-meaning-part-1.htmlJihad X-Press TM A Revolutionary New Program from USAIDhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/jihad-x-press-tm-from-usaid.html
Jihad X-Press TM A Revolutionary New Program from USAID

By Joe Giambrone (9/26/13)

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 27 Sep 2013 04:27:38 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/jihad-x-press-tm-from-usaid.htmlObama’s Speech to the UN and His Challenge to the Fundamental Principle of International Lawhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/obama-s-speech-to-the-un-and-his-challenge-to-the-fundamental-principle-of-international-law.html
Obama’s Speech to the UN and His Challenge to the Fundamental Principle of International Law

By Dennis Loo (9/25/13)

“Sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye to slaughter.”

Obama said this in his address before the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2013.

Another, more transparent way of saying what Obama said is this: “The foundational principle of the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Tribunal is wrong: wars launched upon a country that has not attacked you first is not the supreme international crime.”

The ban against aggressive war is international law’s linchpin principle because without it all of the rest of international law falls apart.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 26 Sep 2013 04:28:58 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/obama-s-speech-to-the-un-and-his-challenge-to-the-fundamental-principle-of-international-law.htmlTheir Way or Another Way?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/their-way-or-another-way.html
Their Way or Another Way?

By Dennis Loo (9/20/13)

Peter Ludlow has an essay over at The New York Times’ series The Stone entitled “The Banality of Systemic Evil.” His title is a takeoff on the phrase “the banality of evil” made famous by Hannah Arendt’s description of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in her much cited 1963 article “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” Arendt observed that Eichmann was just an ordinary man who committed great acts of evil by merely performing what is expected of him within an evil system. Evil, in other words, is not a maniac as someone like Hitler is usually depicted as, but a product of system’s logic. As Eichmann’s stated during his trial, “I was just following orders.”

Ludlow’s starting point is a recent Time Magazine cover story that notes that 70 percent of those 18-34 years old think Edward Snowden “did a good thing” in leaking information about what the NSA is really doing. As an example of those who think the very opposite to this, Ludlow cites comments by former UN Ambassador John Bolton, an infamous liar and neoconservative, instrumental in lying about the grounds for Bush’s invasion of Iraq as well as many other events, who fumed at Snowden’s actions back in June 2013:

"Number one, this man is a liar. He took an oath to keep the secrets that were shared with him so he could do his job. He said … he would not disclose them, and he lied. Number two, he lied because he thinks he's smarter and has a higher morality than the rest of us. This guy thinks he has a higher morality, that he can see clearer than other 299-million 999-thousand 999 of us, and therefore he can do what he wants. I say that is the worst form of treason."

It’s true that Snowden did act out of a higher morality than that of the system that employed him. Bolton believes in a different standard for morality.

A recent New York Times article (“Court Upbraided N.S.A. on Its Use of Call-Log Data”) details the second known severe reprimand by the FISA Court of the NSA for being misled by the NSA. The NSA told the FISA Court circa 2009 that it makes only “a few hundred queries in the database every year, when it has ‘reasonable, articulable suspicion’ that a telephone call is connected to terrorism.”

Turns out, however, based on these newly released documents by intelligence officials, it’s not a few hundred but thousands. Further, while the NSA said that this list of thousands met the legal standard of suspicion, only about 10% of the 17,8000 phone numbers on the 2009 alert list met that criterion.

In a March 2009 ruling, Judge Reggie B. Walton scolded the NSA:

“The government has compoundedits noncompliance with the court’s orders by repeatedly submitting inaccurate descriptions of the alert list process” to the court, Judge Walton wrote. “It has finally come to light that the F.I.S.C.’s authorizations of this vast collection program have been premised on a flawed depiction of how the N.S.A. uses” the phone call data.

The first part of this two-part series looked primarily at how some elements of the U.S. anti-war movement are assessing the current situation. In it I argue that the maneuvering going on behind closed doors needs to be better appreciated and that it is a mistake for the anti-war movement to now be claiming a victory at "preventing a war." This second part looks at why Obama might be calling for regime change in Syria. Understanding that is critical to the anti-war movement finding its way in the midst of a situation fraught with difficulties and high-stakes.

Those who rule us are incapable of truly understanding the conditions in which they operate and where they seek to call the shots, not because they lack intelligence and information (they have plenty of that) but because their understanding is warped by their worldview of treating people and other governments as objects to be manipulated. It is always shocking to those who approach the world that way when the conscious dynamic role of the people is unleashed. Our rulers think that people will be intimidated by brute force and not dare to rise up against seemingly impossible odds. They think that way partly because they themselves lack that kind of courage and determination: to face those with fierce weapons and still fight them even when your chances look slim to none. I mean that both in the literal sense and in the largest metaphorical sense.

It’s worth looking at what Zbigniew Brzezinski said in June of this year about the Syrian situation. Brzezinski was National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter and author of the U.S. policy of backing the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-1989. This policy gave birth to al-Qaeda whose revenge for having the rug pulled out from under them after the U.S. got what it wanted with the Russian withdrawal is most spectacularly known as 9/11. Thus, Brzezinski knows what he speaks of when he warns about the dangers of unintended consequences.

Amnesty International and the Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning Support Network initiated a petition on WhiteHouse.gov calling on Barack Obama to “grant clemency to Pvt. Bradley Manning.” The petition requires 100,000 signatures by September 20 for the White House to have to comment on it, or it will die. So far there are just over 24,000 signers.

We are almost 25% of the way to 100,000 signers, and must pick up momentum quickly. On Monday September 16, #PardonManning Day, will you sign the peititon, and do the work to be sure that 5 of your friends, family, or colleagues do so?

President Obama has already granted pardons to 39 other prisoners, and a White House spokesperson said he would give consideration to PVT Manning’s request. Showing public support for PVT Manning’s application is the best way to give her a real chance of being released in 3 years, or even sooner. Sign our petition on Whitehouse.gov, and then submit your photo with a personal message at pardon.bradleymanning.org

It is dangerous to claim victories that you have not yet won.To paraphrase Mark Twain: the reports by some in the anti-war movement of a victory are exaggerated.[i]

Let’s be clear: there is still a bloody civil war raging in Syria which has taken close to 120,000 lives. We have not, in other words, “prevented a war.”

We in the anti-war movement have contributed in small measure – at this point – to making it more difficult for Obama to escalate the level of brutality with a bombing campaign. That is what has happened. That is what is real at this point.

The scale of protests against the war up till now were quite modest, truth be told, and had things gone differently in other respects with Obama’s plans, the protests would have to have been far larger, by orders of magnitude, to make a difference.

(Washington) In a radical departure from official White House policy, unnamed sources within the Executive have suggested that President Barack Obama may be preparing to utter true statements, sometime in the short term.

Uncharacteristically candid revelations hint that bypassing the wall of secrecy and over classification of intelligence may be necessary to sway skeptical Americans. Polls of the President’s truthfulness have fluctuated from 62% trustworthiness in 2009 to 0.62% today, a difference of two levels of magnitude. Individuals who trust the President’s statements are largely confined to state mental health facilities, making interviews difficult to obtain prior to publication.

The estate of President Richard Nixon weighed in on the matter, coming to the defense of the President. “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal,” said a Nixon spokesman. President Obama, hoping that Americans’ recollections of the disgraced Nixon have faded, after nearly half a century of revisionism, welcomed the move as a legal defense against charges of perjury, lying to congress, propaganda, deception and fabricating false flag terrorism in the Syrian conflict.

Congress cannot make a war of aggression by the U.S. upon Syria - the “supreme international crime” – moral, just, or legal by voting on it. Even if Congress votes “no,” Obama has already declared that he will not be bound by a “no” vote.

Just because Syrian President Assad has agreed to turn over control of his chemical weapons arsenal does not mean that Obama’s plans for war have been stopped: negotiations and “debates” are part of a continuum used by the U.S. government and other “Great Powers” to justify and accomplish #1 above: domination. To paraphrase Clausewitz’s famous dictum that “war is the continuation of politics by other, violent, means”: when one side is intent on dominating another, negotiations and talks are merely a prelude to and justification for war.

The only way to prevent this war of aggression is for the people to build a movement of powerful resistance as an independent political force and thereby alter the terms on which the public sees the situation. In so doing they can dramatically alter the political balance of forces in the society and world. The President obviously won’t stop the war because he’s the one spearheading the idea in the first place. If you think that Congress can be relied upon to stop this rush to war, consider the fact that Congress has not stopped any of the wars under Bush or Obama, no matter which political party had the majority and who held the White House.

#1-5 are symptomatic of systemic problems. They are not fixable by changing the faces of those in power. There is, nonetheless, a way to resolve these problems: see #5: hundreds who inspire thousands who influence and inspire tens and hundreds of thousands or more by directly speaking out in the streets and in other public ways can change the whole situation and provide the basis for a real solution to these systemic problems.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson reacted yesterday to Russia's Vladimir Putin's NYT OpEd in which Putin pillories the U.S. government for planning a war of aggression. In his September 12, 2013 column entitled "Yes, Vladimir, America is Exceptional," Robinson angrily asserted that Putin is not worthy of taking the moral high ground against Obama and the U.S. government given his record on civil liberties.

Here is what Putin says that so upset Robinson:

Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.

Robinson is not alone. “I almost wanted to vomit,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) told CNN after reading the piece. Robert Parry at Consortium News points out the universal condemnation coming from American political officials and mass media to Putin's comments.

It just so happens in this case, Mr. Robinson, that even though Putin is a strange person to be saying these things, what he says in the OpEd is true.

In what could be read as the Secret Lament of the Outrageously Successful, a 50-year-old male writes to Salon's advice columnist Cary Tennis ("Mr. Big Feels Empty Inside") about the emptiness he feels despite his possesing every outward sign of grand success:

"What went wrong with my life? I have the outward trappings of success at 50 years old. I live in a mansion, have servants and a chauffeur, travel extensively to nice places and resort areas, and spend much time giving motivational and political speeches around the country. I have three successful adult sons, a beautiful, accomplished and brilliant wife with whom I’ve been married 25 years, and have enough money that I could retire tomorrow (if I were willing to downsize, which I am not). I occasionally write for the national press — indeed, I’ve written a not terribly good book, and have yet to publish it. Interviews with me are eagerly sought in my specialty. My picture graces trade publications, magazines and books. I have done far better than almost all of my peers. I suspect that most of them envy me.

"Yes, I realize that other people looking at me must think I live the charmed life; yet that same life seems completely devoid of interest or charm to me. I have absolutely everything except, say, $20 million; but I live a generous lifestyle that the vast majority of denizens of this planet, including many far richer than I, would eagerly take from me. I am considered good-looking; women are constantly hitting on me, and I have become a master of the polite refusal. (Although I realize that this is a woman thing: They like to test men who seem happily married.) I write these words unable to sleep. I haven’t read a book in a year or two; nor have I taken a vacation. My attention span is zero. While I can turn on whenever I need to do so, most of the time I don’t. I feel like a lost soul. And yet I am not depressed! How could I be?"

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

In other words, in direct contradiction to Obama’s flat assertions that the government was not and is not doing this, denials necessitated by Edward Snowden’s revelations, the Obama Administration has been and is deliberately taking both meta-data and the full contents of Americans’ electronic activities and communications.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 27 Oct 2015 18:22:35 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/washington-post-obama-in-2011-secretly-obtained-fisa-ok-to-target-americans-domestic-communications-without-warrant.htmlOf Pedagogy and Politics: Listening to Authority and Listening to the Outside Evidencehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/of-pedagogy-and-politics-listening-to-authority-and-listening-to-the-outside-evidence.html
Of Pedagogy and Politics: Listening to Authority and Listening to the Outside Evidence

By Dennis Loo (9/9/13)

In a September 8, 2013 NYT OpEd, Professor Aaron Hirsh, chairman of the Vermilion Sea Institute and the author of “Telling Our Way to the Sea: a Voyage of Discovery in the Sea of Cortez," has a delightful essay that begins with a story about his students and him floating in the Sea of Cortez. Two of his students notice a popping sound coming from the water below. One of these more perceptive students is blind and the other is a musician. This sparks a whole series of questions from students about where this sound is coming from (it's shrimp), evolution and so on.

Hirsh relates this story to consider the question of the advantages and disadvantages of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Classes) that are all the rage in higher education right now. His main worry about MOOCs is that they are tightly controlled environments in which the material is entirely selected by the professor (the authority) that the student is wholly encapsulated by in the course. The triangular relationship that exists in customary non-online classes of professor, student, and the outside world are truncated into only a binary relationship between what the professor gives to the students and what the student sees and is being tested on. This raises a larger question about the nature and role of education and the tasks of citizens, as Hirsh puts it:

To weigh the claims of authority against evidence that is not curated by that same authority; to forget, at least occasionally, about how one is being watched or assessed by that authority; to be skeptical and independently minded — these are vital abilities in a citizenry defensive of its own power, and I worry that students working inside a virtual world of their professor’s construction are learning to listen too much to the teacher and too little to outside evidence.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” –Adolf Hitler

The propaganda nation has ascended, and Americans remain profoundly ignorant of what it is their empire does around the world. They largely believe what they are told by authority figures, even if what they are told makes no logical sense. Even if what they are told contradicts the evidence in front of their faces. Even if the liars have clear motives for lying to them. Even if similar situations floated right past the liars in the past without comment, clear hypocrisy.

I have called such pathetic ignorance criminal, naming a new category of misdemeanor, criminal ignorance. In a democracy the citizens are responsible for informing themselves about critically-important situations, and not relying on one side’s baseless claims. Sitting back and being told what to think by the government or by the profit-driven media is not informing one’s self. The responsibility of citizens, in a democratic republic, is to sort the liars from the truth tellers. When citizens shirk this responsibility they are derelict in their civic duties, as they cannot make sound, rational decisions. Thus the decisions they do make: giving support, voting, influencing others, are negligent, reckless, unsound and should be called out. That is criminal ignorance.

Something to think about which does not seem to have entered the conversation sufficiently: suppose Obama does launch his cruise missiles against Syria to "punish" Assad? (Assad will no doubt be standing out in the open, along with his loyal troops, waving a pistol and daring the U.S. precision-guided missiles to hit him so that he can be properly punished!) What are the consequences in the long-run of the innocents these missiles kill and the anger and desire for revenge that attacks like this provoke?

As those who have been paying attention to the genesis of anti-state terrorism directed towards U.S. targets since the U.S. initially supported with weapons and other assistance, then pulled the rug out from under, anti-Soviet Jihadists like Osama Bin-Laden in Afghanistan, subsequently leading directly to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole by al-Qaeda and then a year later the 9/11 attacks: blowback is an all too real consequence of contemporary U.S. foreign policy. U.S. foreign policy created al-Qaeda. Cynical anti-Soviet manueverings led to al-Qaeda - "if the Muslim fundamentalists are anti-Soviet, then we'll fund them, who cares?!" - which led to 9/11 which led to the "War on Terror" which everyday produces more individuals and groups who want revenge for the injustices committed in the name of the WOT, and so on...

Members of the national World Can’t Wait organization will rally today on Market Street, denouncing the ongoing threat of a U.S. military attack against Syria, on the eve of planned protest marches nationwide this weekend.

World Can’t Wait has stated that the Obama administration’s claims of use of nerve gas by the Assad regime are unverified, and that any U.S. attack – even if limited in scope to “surgical strikes” – would constitute an illegal war crime by the U.S., regardless of the congressional approval now sought by the president.

“Any U.S. military attack upon Syria would be the supreme international war crime of a war of aggression upon a country that has not attacked and does not threaten us,” stated Dennis Loo, a national leader of World Can’t Wait. “Any attacks would greatly increase the killing and destruction and likely provoke a wider regional conflict.”

Pointing to opinion polls showing widespread public opposition to Obama’s Syria plans, World Can’t Wait’s Stephanie Tang said: “People remember how overt lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction were the government’s pretext for launching an illegal, immoral aggressive war against Iraq. Obama, Kerry, Pelosi – now they’re seizing on the alleged use of nerve gas by Assad as an excuse to bomb Syria, trying to dictate the terms of a civil war that has already cost 100,000 lives.”

Rally speakers will reply to John Kerry’s pronouncement that the president has the right to take military action “no matter what Congress does.” They will discuss the facts of this unfolding international crisis, including the risk of a wider regional war, and they will announce further plans for protest that do not rely on congressional or other standard political avenues.

And you think that other unseen forces are making him do all of these terrible things, then take that reasoning process just ONE step further.

What you're saying is that one individual, even the most powerful politician in the world, cannot do the right thing because of the forces that surround him.

You are saying, in effect, that the problem is the system and not who is elected into office.

Even assuming that someone like Barack Obama has the right intentions and goodwill in his heart, he has been completely unable to follow his heart and do what is right because the system that he sits at the official pinnacle of won't let him.

Even if you believe that someone else is forcing him to push for bombing Syria, that is exactly what he IS doing: acting as pointman for the carrying out of the "supreme international crime."

When did it become appropriate to hold a vote about whether or not we should commit the “supreme international crime”?[1]

Are the Syrian civilians who will surely be killed by U.S. bombs any less dead because Congress gave the green light for those bombs to be used?

Since Obama has declared that he will not regard a "no" vote from Congress as preventing him from launching a war of aggression upon Syria, what purpose does his asking for Congress’ “permission” serve?

Will you as an American feel better if Congress goes through the motions of debating whether or not they and we should go along with the commission of war crimes?

If you voted for Obama because he promised to bring “change, ” to restore the rule of law and due process, and because he said he opposed the war on Iraq, then how does O-bomb-a sound to you now?

1U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, stated that “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." (Wikipedia).

There is a dictum among trial lawyers that you should never ask a witness a question that you don’t already know the answer to because if you do, they might say something that would blow your case.

This is what Obama did when on Saturday he announced that he was going to go to Congress to ask for their endorsement of his intention to bomb Syria.

He already knew what answer he was going to get. But just in case, he made it clear that even if he got a “no” that he reserved the right to do it anyway.

Today Nancy Pelosi chimed in and said she supported Obama’s plan and that she didn’t think that the POTUS had to get permission from Congress, but that it was a nice idea anyway to build more popular support for the war.

So thoughtful of the POTUS to include Congress on its war-making powers!

While protesting in Times Square Saturday, we listened amid the noise to Obama’s speech of mostly stick, and a little carrot. Some of the protesters took his “largesse” at offering Congress the chance to endorse his plan to attack Syria (the carrot) as a concession by Obama. They say we should seize the moment and “let Congress know” how many people are against this strike and potential regional war.

Congress knows, as they read the public opinion polls too, and there could be an actual political fight in Congress over Obama’s plan, leading to a political damage for his agenda. But, as John Kerry, the former anti-war veteran turned Secretary of ruling class warmongering said,

“We don’t contemplate that the Congress is going to vote no,” Kerry said, but he stressed the president had the right to take action “no matter what Congress does.”

That was the stick of Obama’s message, backed up by his assertion that as Commander in Chief, his military is ready today, tomorrow, or in the near future to strike.

Peter Goodman, host of NYC's "The News Guy," interviewed Dennis Loo about Chelsea/Bradley Manning (and related matters) on August 21, 2013. You can listen to it here. It goes for approximately 45 minutes.

There are a few aspects to this developing situation that have either not been raised at all or that deserve greater attention.

The first is that when governments such as the U.S. decide to go to war, by the time that they announce publicly that they are seriously considering whether or not to launch the missiles and send the ships, etc., they have already behind closed doors decided to commence hostilities. Modern warfare requires months of painstaking, protracted, and laborious military planning and placing equipment and personnel in place. These logistical matters dictate that no government planning to launch aggressive war as the U.S. is doing is doing so only now because all of a sudden they have “discovered” that chemical weapons have been used. They have been placing assets in place for weeks and months ahead of time and drawing up attack plans for similarly long periods of time.

The public show of debating, discussing, and rattling the sabers are a PR exercise designed specifically to win over the public to supporting what the rulers have behind closed doors already determined is in their best interests to do.

Three or four or so years ago I noticed that an old high school classmate of mine had a regular column at Huffington Post. I read a couple of his postings there and thought that he did a nice job stylistically, even though I did not agree with his perspective or with his argument. I then contacted him by email to ask if he could assist me in any way in getting a similar gig at HuffPost so that I could put my articles in front of HuffPost's audience.

For those who don't know already, Huffington Post was started by and is run by Arianna Huffington, a former very outspoken Republican and ex-wife to ex-California GOP gubernatorial candidate Michael Huffington. Arianna, rather unusually, is now a very outspoken liberal Democrat. HuffPost is one of the world's most popular websites, as of today's Alexa ranking, #93 worldwide and #20 in the U.S. The site combines a liberal ethic and news coverage/aggregating with the right-hand column trick of a number of websites to drive its hits up: cheesecake shots of (mostly) young and beautiful women.

This former classmate of mine, like me, went to an Ivy League school and went on to become a university professor, but unlike me went through the 1960s and escaped from the experience still a political liberal. (Is that because he went to Yale and I went to Harvard? LOL). I complimented him on his writing style - which I meant sincerely - and asked him to look at one or two of my articles. He did so and said in reply two things - that he thought my writing was "unnuanced" and that he saw no reason why HuffPost should publish my writings: "Why should they?" he said.

"I have no interest in any open-ended conflict in Syria, but we do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable," President Barack Obama said in a PBS interview earlier this week.

With allegations of a horrific chemical weapons attack outside Damascus and new reports of a "napalm" bomb being dropped on a school playground in northern Syria, this statement, made by an American Commander-in-Chief, would certainly come as a surprise to many of Obama's predecessors, considering the use of chemical weapons has been standard U.S. military procedure for decades.

Napalm, which is classified as an incendiary, rather than chemical, weapon, is composed of a gel that sticks to the skin and can burn down to the bone. Used extensively by the U.S. military during the last years of World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters, the napalm bombing of Japan killed at least 330,000 people. Twice the amount of napalm as was dropped on Japan in 1945 was used by American forces over three years during the Korean War: 32,357 tons as compared to 16,500 tons.

Between 1963 and 1973, the U.S. military dropped nearly 400,000 tons of napalm on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. In 1980, the United Nations declared the use of napalm gel in densely-populated civilian areas to be a war crime.

Agent Orange, a chemical weapon derived from herbicides, was also used by Americans during the Vietnam War. Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed nearly 20 million gallons of material containing chemical herbicides and defoliants mixed with jet fuel in Vietnam, eastern Laos and parts of Cambodia, as part of Operation Ranch Hand.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 30 Aug 2013 20:38:42 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/treaty-obligations-war-crimes-and-accountability-a-study-in-american-hypocrisy.htmlA Reaction to Obama's 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington Speechhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/a-reaction-to-obama-s-50th-anniversary-of-the-march-on-washington-speech.html
A Reaction to Obama's 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington Speech

By Dennis Loo (8/28/13)

As I listened to Obama speak today I could not help feeling that there was something unseemly about this speech. Martin Luther King, Jr., were he here now, would be acting more like Cornel West than Obama.

While King was no revolutionary like Malcolm X, he was nevertheless cut down by an assassin because of and after announcing that he was going to expand the civil rights movement into a poor people's movement. King also vocally opposed the Vietnam War.

What would King say, if he were here, about the multiple illegal and unjust wars and occupations that Obama is presiding over and prosecuting? What would he say about Obama's plans to launch yet another illegal and unjust war upon Syria? Would he not be joining with brother West and condemning Obama as a "global George Zimmerman" for acting as judge, jury, and executioner in murdering hundreds of children with drone attacks? Would he not have stood in defense of those unjustly harassed by Stop and Frisk? Would he not be condemning the persecution of Bradley/Chelsea Manning and whistleblowers more generally? Would he not speak out against torture and be demanding that torturers be prosecuted and the torture and murder of prisoners such as those at Guantanamo, Bagram, other unnamed CIA torture sites, and within the U.S. prisons, be ended? What would he say about Obama's signing the National Defense Authorization Act and expanding, defending and lying about the NSA's warrantless spying on the world?

Those of us who with our memory functions intact can be forgiven if we have an eerie feeling of deja vu when our government starts ramping up justifications for war by citing the use of "weapons of mass destruction." In the case of Syria, it's chemical warfare. Chemical weapons, of course, are banned by international law for good reason: they are a heinous weapon and completely indiscriminatory, killing or harming combatants and non-combatant children, women and men alike. Obama says that he cannot wait to hear back from the UN weapons inspectors who are already in Syria about just who is responsible for chemical weapons and if chemical weapons have actually been used at all and that he must begin bombing beginning on Thursday. Sen. John McCain joins the chorus with Obama for another Kosovo. (Right there one should pause for reflection when McCain and Obama agree. It's not that they couldn't theoretically both agree on something good, it's just something that should make you look a little more closely before jumping on the bandwagon.)

"It is very troublesome," he said. "That starts getting to some core national interests that the United States has, both in terms of us making sure that weapons of mass destruction are not proliferating, as well as needing to protect our allies, our bases in the region."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has announced a series of measures to prevent soccer stadiums and university campuses from becoming major protest venues as the football season and the academic year begins. In doing so, Mr. Erdogan is taking a leaf out of the playbook of Egyptian military strongman Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and other Arab autocrats who demonize their opponents as terrorists.

In a series of recent statements aimed at students and militant soccer fans who played prominent roles in the mass Gezi Park protests in June, the government said it intended to replace private security forces in stadiums and on campuses with police forces; was banning the chanting of political slogans during soccer matches; obliging clubs to force spectators to sign a pledge to abide by the ban before attending a game; and was cancelling scholarships for students who had participated in anti-government protests.

The government said plainclothes policemen would mingle with militant fans during matches and that their activities on social media would be monitored. It also restricted the consumption of alcohol in stadiums.

The announcements were accompanied by stark statements by Mr. Erdogan, his deputy Bulent Arinc and his sports minister Suat Kilic as well as a video issued by the Anti-Terrorism Office and the police warning that protests were the first step towards terrorism.

The 55-second video featuring a young woman demonstrator-turned suicide bomber warned the public that “our youth, who are the guarantors of our future, can start with small demonstrations of resistance that appear to be innocent, and after a short period of time, can engage without a blink in actions that may take the lives of dozens of innocent people.” Throughout the video, the words ‘before it is too late’ are displayed.

The video followed the indictment of 20 members of Carsi, the support group of storied Istanbul club Besiktas JK that has a huge following across the country on charges of belonging to an illegal organization. Carsi played a leading role in the mass anti-government protests in June sparked by a brutal police crackdown on environmentalists protesting plans to bulldoze Gezi Park on Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square to make place for a mall. Carsi joined forces in the protests with supporters of Beskitas’ two Istanbul arch rivals, Fenerbahce FC and Galatasaray FC.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 27 Aug 2013 03:01:42 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/turkey-moves-to-prevent-protests-in-stadiums-and-on-campus.htmlIs This The Most Pathetic Sting Operation the U.S. Government Ever Concocted?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/is-this-the-most-pathetic-sting-operation-the-u-s-government-ever-concocted.html
Is This The Most Pathetic Sting Operation the U.S. Government Ever Concocted?

By Nima Shirazi (8/26/13)

Ali Baba by Maxfield Parrish (1909)

It is well-known that the law enforcement and national security arms of the United States government routinely hatch and orchestrateelaborate sting operations, and then claim victory over thwarting nefarious plots that they themselves manufactured, planned, coordinated, funded and sometimes even led.

In its endless efforts to cast Iran as the most fearsome nation in the world and its internationally safeguarded and regularly inspected nuclear program as an ever-looming threat, the U.S. government’s sting industry went one step further down the rabbit hole this week when “US prosecutors have charged a man from Sierra Leone with trying to sell undercover agents 1,000 tonnes of yellowcake uranium,” Reuters reported today.

Apparently, the suspect – 33-year-old Patrick Campbell of Freetown – is the stupidest wannabe black market uranium dealer on the planet. He was “arrested at John F Kennedy airport on Wednesday after he arrived from Sierra Leone with the sample of uranium concealed in the soles of shoes in his luggage.”

Here’s the rundown:

Campbell said he was affiliated with a company engaged in mining and selling of uranium, gold, and diamonds for export and communicated via telephone, Skype and email that he was seeking to buy processed uranium 308, also known as yellowcake, to be delivered to Iran, [Homeland Security agent Louise] Miller said. Yellowcake uranium, when enriched, can be used in the manufacture of nuclear fuel and weapons. The uranium was to be disguised in a mix with other types of ore. The shipment for delivery to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas was to yield 1,000 tonnes of yellowcake, according to the criminal complaint.

After his arrest Campbell admitted to agents that he had engaged in talks for “a contract for the sale of uranium to be delivered to Iran”, the complaint said. He admitted having a sample with him.

So how did all this go down?

Well, according to the Homeland Security affidavit, Campbell “allegedly responded to an ad in May 2012 on the website alibaba.com seeking to purchase uranium that was placed by an undercover US agent posing as an American broker representing persons in Iran.”

Yes, he responded to an online ad. On a website called alibaba.com. (How’s that for a little unintentional Orientalism?) The website is run by the Alibaba Group, “a family of Internet-based businesses which makes it easy for anyone to buy or sell online anywhere in the world.”

Where else would a devious Iranian mineral trader go for all his nefarious, sanctions-busting, nuclear weapons-making needs?

Quite simply, the story is preposterous. That Mr. Campbell would be lured by a fake broker for Iranian buyers to the United States, of all places, to make a secret uranium deal is embarrassing and sad.

Never once, in the series of events revealed through this case, is any actual connection to Iran ever made. With this in mind, the sensational headline accompanying the report – “Man caught in ‘uranium for Iran’ sting” – is all the more misleading and disingenuously alarmist.

Campbell is charged with violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, in addition to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which regulates trade involving foreign countries deemed by the President of the United States to pose an "unusual and extraordinary threat...to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States." Iran has been deemed such a threat by every Commander-in-Chief since 1979.

If found guilty, Campbell - who was never contacted by anyone from or in Iran or with any connection whatsoever to that country - faces up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine for moronically doing what an American intelligence agent asked him to do.

Such a bogus scare story about yellowcake being transferred from Africa to a Middle Eastern country accused of having a nuclear weapons program is eerily reminiscent of the claims made in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. Similarly silly allegations have been made about Iran obtaining aluminum tubes and magnets for its nuclear work – another echo of the Iraq narrative.

August 24, 2013 - In response to reports about the U.S. government's sting operation, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Chairman of Iran's Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee said today that this "US scenario" was a "joke."

He stated that because Iran has no need to buy yellowcake from the private citizens from other countries, the entire operation (or perhaps just its publicity) appears manufactured with the intent to undermine diplomatic overtures made by Iran toward the United States since the June election of Hassan Rouhani.

"Iran is among the producers of yellowcake; therefore, the claim has been designed with the aim of affecting Iran's talks with the P5+1 group under the new administration," Boroujerdi said, according to PressTV.

"Instead of waging a psychological war, Washington should seize the emerging opportunity in the new Iranian administration and pursue constructive dialog for putting an end to the issue of Iran's nuclear energy program,” Boroujerdi added.

“I’m an upstanding citizen and I’m not doing anything wrong. I just don’t want the government invading my privacy.” –unnamed

I got into a heated argument, a disagreeable shouting match over that idea today – mostly being shouted at for nitpicking someone on my own side. I find the above rationale to be a surface response without any thought behind it or any acknowledgement of how actual surveillance-societies of the past devolved into Orwellian abominations. Worse still, the current drive for a “Total Information Awareness” society, where birth to death communications will be stored forever by the government, looms over us.

NSA / Booz Allen Hamilton whistleblower Edward Snowden has said:

“…they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them.”

To that end the NSA’s operating budget has increased steadily, avoiding any cutbacks from the so-called “sequester.” The new NSA storage facility in Utah is a central piece of this total data capture society.

“An article by Forbes estimates the storage capacity as between 3 and 12 exabytes in the near term… advances in technology could be expected to increase the capacity by orders of magnitude in the coming years.” (Wikipedia)

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 25 Aug 2013 15:13:18 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/pedestrian-reasoning-about-government-spying.htmlDemocrats, Republicans and Pro Wrestlers: What They Have in Commonhttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/democrats-republicans-and-pro-wrestlers-what-they-have-in-common.html
Democrats, Republicans and Pro Wrestlers: What They Have in Common

By Dennis Loo (8/23/13)

In the story that prompted this headline, yesterday Obama's DOJ filed a brief in Federal Court in response to a lawsuit filed by Plaintiff Sundus Shaker Saleh. Saleh is an Iraqi single mother who "filed a complaint in March 2013 in San Francisco federal court alleging that the planning and waging of the war constituted a 'crime of aggression' against Iraq, a legal theory that was used by the Nuremberg Tribunal to convict Nazi war criminals after World War II."

The DOJ's response to this lawsuit: the named Defendants George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz are immune from being sued on the grounds that they were acting within the scope of their employment. In other words, as some of the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg famously argued: "We were only following orders [doing our jobs]."

Evidently, within the scope of your jobs at the head of the Empire is lying the nation into a war that has cost trillions in dollars, hundreds tortured, millions rendered orphans, and over a million killed so far. Interesting statement that the Obama DOJ is making, isn't it? Their immediate predecessors should not be held to account for lies that the whole world knows were lies - except perhaps some poor beknighted Fox News viewers who still don't know this - and all of the deaths, torture, destruction (think of the priceless artifacts destroyed from what was the heart of the Fertile Crescent where early civilizations began and flourished), costs, displacements, and ruined lives of both Iraqis and Americans, the gutting of civil liberties, a process that Obama has aggressively carried forward, because these were all within the "scope of their employment." And further, does this not tell us what they - the current administration - thinks that their job is - to do likewise, to mangle the truth and destroy lives, isn't that what Empires are known for?

Ex-professional wrestler, Navy Seal, and ex-Minnesotta Governor Jesse "the Body" Ventura is known for his blunt honesty. After leaving the governorship, Ventura stated that the Republicans and Democrats are just like pro wrestlers: they fight like sworn enemies in the ring and afterwards go out to dinner together like fast friends. "It's all show biz," he said.

Today's NYT reports on Obama's release of a heretofore secret FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Judge's 2011 ruling rebuking the NSA for repeatedly misrepresenting to the FISA Court what the NSA has been doing and exceeding its stated surveillance of foreign suspected terrorists to include all too many unrelated domestic electronic communications.

Obama is releasing - i.e., leaking - this document in order to show a) FISA judges are not merely rubber-stamping NSA's requests for permission to surveil because here we have a FISA judge objecting to the NSA's activities, and b) that oversight can therefore be accomplished and the American people can feel "comfortable" that the invasions of their privacy are being properly supervised.

The actual ruling - redacted version - can be read here. There are a number of interesting aspects to this matter.

We are on the eve of Judge Lind’s sentencing of Bradley Manning. Protests are planned after the verdict is announced. Details on this are at the end of this article.

For context we should not forget that Obama, the man who promised “hope” and “change,” decided to charge Manning and ordered him kept in solitary confinement for nine months, subjecting him to conditions that the UN special rapporteur on torture labeled “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” as The Guardian reported on March 12, 2012:

The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source.

Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier's arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.

Protests and only protests (including P.J. Crowley’s resignation as the State Department spokesman over Obama’s treatment of Manning) finally forced Obama to move Manning out of solitary into a normal prison. While in solitary Manning had been, among other outrages, forced to sleep and stand naked.

Brought to trial, the U.S. government headed by this champion of "due process" and the "rule of law" denied Manning the right to mount a real defense, with the judge ruling that he could not assert his rights as a whistleblower.

Judge Lind just announced that she will pronounce her sentence of the hero Bradley Manning tomorrow morning.

In anticipation of this, please join us in spreading word via Twitter, especially this evening. Tweet #BecauseOfBradleyManning and help it trend. It was launched a few days ago based on the title to an article I wrote here on 8/1/13 and which was reposted at WorldCantWait.net on 8/15/13: "Because of Bradley Manning."

Protests in support of Bradley and demanding that he be released are scheduled in numerous cities.

"Even the tiniest mistake during an operation to extract over 1,300 fuel rods at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan could lead to a series of cascading failures with an apocalyptic outcome, fallout researcher Christina Consolo told RT.

"Fukushima operator TEPCO wants to extract 400 tons worth of spent fuel rods stored in a pool at the plant’s damaged Reactor No. 4. The removal would have to be done manually from the top store of the damaged building in the radiation-contaminated environment.

"In the worst-case scenario, a mishandled rod may go critical, resulting in an above-ground meltdown releasing radioactive fallout with no way to stop it, said Consolo, who is the founder and host of Nuked Radio. But leaving the things as they are is not an option, because statistical risk of a similarly bad outcome increases every day, she said."

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:06:44 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Disasters/fukushima-apocalypse.htmlThe War Criminals Should Be On Trial, Not The Whistleblowershttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-war-criminals-should-be-on-trial-not-the-whistleblowers.html
The War Criminals Should Be On Trial, Not The Whistleblowers

By Dennis Loo (8/17/13)

This week we witnessed the distressing spectacle of a hero apologizing to those who should be prostrating themselves in shame for their persecution of him.

This kangaroo courtroom with a blustering prosecutor waving his hands about and a stern judge pronouncing this hero “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty…”, both of whom claim the moral and legal high ground: they do our Commander-in-Chief’s vengeful bidding.

POTUS, who speaks ever so frequently and eloquently about the rule of law, of transparency, and of Constitutional rights, elected to pursue this persecution of Bradley Manning. He could have greeted – gratefully - Manning’s revelations of crimes and acted to right the wrongs that Manning uncovered.

After all, he claims to uphold the rights and importance of whistleblowers.

But the reader here - I am certain - knows better.

Even if you are still a fan of Obama, you probably guffaw at the idea of POTUS pursuing the prosecution of the crimes that Manning uncovered, knowing that the head of this empire would not dare to pursue the perpetrators of these atrocities because to do so would mean that he’d have to prosecute virtually his entire cabinet, federal agencies including the NSA, FBI, CIA and Pentagon, most of Congress, and himself. He would prefer to continue to murder the truth, torture innocent prisoners with forced feeding, indefinite, and preventive detention, drive them to hunger strike and suicide, assassinate children with drones, and persecute the truthtellers, all the while claiming to be on the side of the angels, than to actually prosecute those crimes! He would never, ever prosecute the very people that he has appointed to do his bidding and certainly never, ever, bite the hand that feeds him. Why should we ever expect him to do so? Not in a reality-based community anyway.

Because this crime scene has been so sullied, some reminders are in order.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 18 Aug 2013 16:33:14 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-war-criminals-should-be-on-trial-not-the-whistleblowers.htmlBradley Manning Did the Right Thing by Whistleblowinghttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/bradley-manning-did-the-right-thing-by-whistleblowing.html
Bradley Manning Did the Right Thing by Whistleblowing

By Dennis Loo (8/15/13)

Bradley Manning is facing 90 years in prison. The government barred his defense team from presenting a whistleblower defense during his trial's first phase as to guilt or innocence. Since Manning’s rationale for revealing secret information that showed devastating and routine lies, war crimes, and crimes against humanity was to whistleblow – so that people could know what their government is actually doing - he was prevented from really presenting his case. Given this, he was not surprisingly, but nonetheless outrageously, convicted on nearly every charge prior to the current sentencing phase of the trial.

Under the pressures that he and his team are feeling in the face of this, they are attempting to obtain leniency from the judge. This is how his latest statement from the court needs to be seen:

"I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I 'm sorry that they hurt the United States," he said. "I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people. The last few years have been a learning experience.”

Manning says he understood what he was doing and the decisions he made. However, he says he did not believe at the time that leaking the information would cause harm.

…

Manning took the stand and gave the statement as part of the defense team's efforts to persuade the judge to issue a lighter sentence.

"I should have worked more aggressively inside the system...Unfortunately, I can't go back and change things," Manning [said].

Lavabit's founder and operator Ladar Levison, whose email encryption program was used by whistleblower Edward Snowden to contact media before he went public on his revelations, has been forced to shut down his company. While Levison is unable to state directly why he has suspended his operations, it is very straightforward to read between the lines from what he has said: "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit."

In light of the recent scandal involving Milwaukee Brewer’s player Ryan Braun, Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, and the Biogenesis Clinic, the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) has been in the forefront of sports news yet again. While Major League Baseball (MLB) has continued to assure fans that their drug testing regiment is as strenuous as it has ever been, PEDs’ re-emergence makes me wonder, has anything really changed since the 2007 release of the Mitchell Report?[i]

A slew of tarnished names and asterisks fill the record books (e.g., Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds). America’s pastime has been chopped down and dragged through the mud. If anyone needs proof of this, just take a look at World Series TV ratings over the past ten years. Since the steroid scandal height in the early 2000’s, we have seen a steady decline in TV viewership with 2012 being the lowest rated season since the World Series first aired on national TV in 1973. There is no doubt that PEDs’ use has diminished the number of fans due to the belief that the sport is no longer legitimate.

Obama tells the nation that he wants us to feel "comfortable" with the government spying on all of our electronic communications and activities. He doesn't want to alter the warrantless spying on everyone. Perish the thought! He just wants us to feel more comfortable with it.

While he destroys the Fourth Amendment, he says in effect that he had to destroy it in order to save it.

As he blocks innocent people from being released from the gulag of Guantanamo and tortures them with force feedings, he makes soothing speeches to the nation and the world claiming that he really would like to close the prison, really, but he just can't.

ElysiumUnspoiled

A desolate third world wasteland. A gated, auspicious, white people paradise. Slave sweatshop. Tea and martinis. Not all that implausible, but Elysium represents the ultimate gated community, while the third world has become the entire earth.

This fundamental class distinction leads to inevitable class conflict in Neil Blomkamp’s follow up to District 9, a similarly weighty sci-fi film. Both films take on issues of global significance, particularly immigration, apartheid and capitalist exploitation of the underclass. Blomkamp strikes a blow for the rest of humanity, and Elysium is a very good film, bordering on greatness. For an action sci-fi thriller, it delivers the battles, the archetypes and the desperation of the world. I heartily recommend seeing it.

Responding to Jeffrey Beard's Los Angeles Times Op-ed

DennisLoo.com Editor's Note: We received this from the RCP, USA, LA Branch. We are posting it here because of what it tells readers about the situation in the California Prison System and the larger context of both mass incarceration by the U.S. and its policies of torture and indefinite and "preventive" detention. (Preventive detention is holding people on the grounds that they MIGHT do something authorities don't want.) The article cites these eloquent words from one of the striking prisoners: “A hunger strike is not taken lightly by us, we are not suicidal, rather we hope to save lives. We may not be able to save our lives. But we have come to identify our existence in SHU as a conveyor belt leading into an oven of inferno. And we may indeed be strapped onto this conveyor belt with no way out as we have continued for years to watch our comrades fall into the abyss of the oven in psychosis, suicide or other chronic illness. And we may not be able to stop our ride from dropping us into the abyss but we will stop this conveyor belt for future generations to come. Today this ride stops!”

Four weeks ago, 30,000 people in prisons in California and surrounding states went on a hunger strike to protest their conditions, in particular in Security Housing Units (called SHU's). Currently, there are hundreds still going without food, they are losing weight, being sent to the hospital and one has even died since this began.

In the Los Angeles Timesfor Tuesday, August 6, 2013, Jeffrey Beard, head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), argued that this hunger strike is not about protesting living conditions that constitute torture, but is instead prison gangs attempting to “restore their ability to terrorize fellow prisoners, prison staff and communities throughout California.” He went on to defend the conditions of those in the SHU and argued this was not solitary confinement and therefore, not torture.

Steven Pinker, contributing editor at The New Republic and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard, has an August 6, 2013 article at The New Republic entitled: “Science is Not Your Enemy. “ The article is a defense of science against those from the Right and those from the Left who have been pillorying science.

For its part, the Right doesn’t like science because it undermines its claims to faith-based systems such as religion, without which, the Right argues, we would not have morality and therefore we’d all go about raping and pillaging. Their arguments for the need for God-given morality of course doesn’t hold up very long when you look at what the Church and what these very apostles for faith-based answers and solutions do. Exhibit 1 for the Prosecution: the invasion of Iraq…

For those of the postmodern-influenced Left, science is no good because, as Pinker cites

"This passage, from a 2011 review in The Nation of three books by Sam Harris by the historian Jackson Lears, makes the standard case for the prosecution by the [postmodernist] left:

'Positivist assumptions provided the epistemological foundations for Social Darwinism and pop-evolutionary notions of progress, as well as for scientific racism and imperialism. These tendencies coalesced in eugenics, the doctrine that human well-being could be improved and eventually perfected through the selective breeding of the "fit" and the sterilization or elimination of the "unfit." ... Every schoolkid knows about what happened next: the catastrophic twentieth century. Two world wars, the systematic slaughter of innocents on an unprecedented scale, the proliferation of unimaginable destructive weapons, brushfire wars on the periphery of empire—all these events involved, in various degrees, the application of sceintific [sic] research to advanced technology.'"

In the Bradley Manning trial, presently in the sentencing phase, those who have been packing the courtroom and demonstrating outside in support of Manning wear black t-shirts with the single word printed in white on it: TRUTH.

It’s an appropriate retort to the kangaroo court prosecuting Manning for revealing truths about what the U.S. government has been and is doing in the world. It has the elegance of concision: this is what is at stake in his trial – Truth.

That is what Manning risked his career and his life for: to reveal the truth to the people because he believed that the American people deserve and would want to know the truth.

I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information … this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general….

In the famous scene from the 1992 film “A Few Good Men,” written by Aaron Sorkin, Jack Nicholson, playing Col. Nathan R. Jessep, driven to his psychological limits, heatedly says from the witness stand, “You can’t handle the truth!”

This case, if you don't already know about it, is going to be hard for you to believe. But it is real. Gregory Koger faces a 300-day sentence for peacefully videotaping with an iPhone on November 1, 2009 a statement by Sunsara Taylor at a public meeting of the "Ethical" Humanist Society of Chicago. Taylor had been invited to address the EHSC and then they withdrew their permission. She was making a statement about censorship to the assembly that Koger was recording when he was attacked and arrested. The "Ethical" Humanist Society, despite its name, pressed charges against Koger.

You can read about this case, which involves, besides this outrageous arrest, prosecution, and conviction, secret proceedings held without informing Koger and his attorney. Go to DropTheCharges.net.

The news today from Japan is not good. Yet another earthquake (6.0) in the Fukushima prefecture in Japan, the site of the devastating 2011 9.0 quake, further complicating the ongoing consequences from the 2011 quake. Even without this new earthquake, the damage from the 2011 quake threatens - with the most toxic substances known on earth - the Pacific Ocean, all the nations that border the Pacific, all of the ocean creatures and life in it, and the seafood and livelihoods that people depend upon from it.

Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an "emergency" that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country's nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co are only a temporary solution, he said.

Tepco's "sense of crisis is weak," Kinjo said. "This is why you can't just leave it up to Tepco alone" to grapple with the ongoing disaster.

The latest, overwrought, bromidic claptrap published by a mainstream media outlet is an article in The Atlantic written by Graham Allison of Harvard University’s Belfer Center. Entitled “Will Iran Get a Bomb—or Be Bombed Itself—This Year?“, Allison posits and attempts to answer “12 key questions about Iran’s nuclear challenge,” which is apparently code for “efforts by the United States and Israel to force Iran to relinquish its inalienable national rights by explicitly abrogating international law.”

The article was adapted from a recent lecture delivered at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual gathering of imperial apparatchiks and their fawning acolytes in the press and pseudo-intelligensia. It relies heavily on a gullible audience ignorant of the history and reality of the Iranian nuclear program.

The first excerpt here comes from a letter that U.S. veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom Daniel Somers wrote to his family on June 10, 2013. After writing the letter he committed suicide:

During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from. I take some pride in that, actually, as to move on in life after being part of such a thing would be the mark of a sociopath in my mind. These things go far beyond what most are even aware of.

To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand. Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me. They offer no help, and actively block the pursuit of gaining outside help via their corrupt agents at the DEA. Any blame rests with them.

In their first real conviction of anyone involved in Wall Street ‘s toxic mortgages scandal that brought the U.S. economy and the rest of the world’s capitalist economies to the edge of disaster - saved only by the Brobdignagian $13 Trillion bailout (greatly exceeding the officially declared $787 Billion bailout) – one middle-level former Goldman Sachs trader, Fabrice Tourre, was found guilty yesterday of six counts of civil securities fraud. A handful of others, none of them high-level executives, were settled out of court prior to Tourre’s conviction.

The SEC, under fire for being asleep at the wheel, put its top people on this case.

Because of Bradley Manning, we have Edward Snowden, who was inspired to come forward by Manning’s example;

Because of Bradley Manning, we know that most of the prisoners held at Guantanamo are innocent or low-level operatives and we have the identities and pictures of the prisoners held at Guantanamo who are now hunger striking (BradleyManning.org);

Because of Bradley Manning, we have the “Collateral Murder” video which allowed Reuters to finally find out how their reporters were killed, in the face of years of Pentagon lies and stonewalling, and allowed the world to see the attitudes and actions of the U.S. soldiers who commit war crimes and laugh about it, and by implication, the brass and public officials who expect and encourage this barbaric behavior;

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Thu, 15 Aug 2013 14:32:46 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/because-of-bradley-manning.htmlBeyond a Reasonable Doubt? Jury Nullification and the Power of the Peoplehttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/beyond-a-reasonable-doubt-jury-nullification-and-the-power-of-the-people.html
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? Jury Nullification and the Power of the People

By Dennis Loo (7/31/13)

New material added 8/1/13

Some of those who support the Zimmerman verdict say that given the available evidence, one cannot find beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin. They may not personally have any doubts that Zimmerman did in fact murder Trayvon, but they believe the legal standard for murder 2 cannot be and/or was not met in the trial.

“Maddy,” Juror B29, fits this description, as did at least two others in the jury, who all nevertheless ended up voting to acquit Zimmerman, believing that the legal instructions they were given dictated this result. This was especially true because of Judge Debra "Full" Nelson’s instruction1 to the jury before they began deliberations that under Stand Your Ground, Zimmerman had a right to defend himself if he felt threatened and that he did not have an obligation to retreat. This instruction, it should be pointed out, was not justified given the fact that Zimmerman was unquestionably initiating an aggressive action.

Yesterday, the judge in Bradley Manning’s show trial found Manning guilty on nearly every charge but the most draconian of “aiding the enemy,” which could have brought the death penalty. If such a trial were going on in Russia today, what angle do you suppose we would hear from the U.S.’s major news outlets and from our highest public officials? That the Russian government was making sure to protect the welfare of the Russian people by going after spies out to harm the Russian people? Hardly. We'd be regaled with talk of how repressive and hypocritical Russia's leaders and system are. Our leaders would be patting themselves on the back about how unrepressive and unauthoritarian America is by comparison. Lucky you live America, my friend! You could instead be someplace where the government spies on everyone, turns everyone into an informer, the people live in fear of their government, the media are mouthpieces of the government and tell people colossal lies daily, and where dissidents are tortured and killed through judicial and extra-judicial action. Oh wait...!

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 06 Aug 2013 19:10:43 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/NSA/Snowden-Articles-Videos/what-whistleblowers-reveal-and-governments-seek-to-conceal.htmlBradley Manning's Verdict is In: The US Government is Guilty of War Crimeshttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/bradley-manning-verdict-is-in.html
Bradley Manning's Verdict is In: The US Government is Guilty of War Crimes

By Dennis Loo (7/30/13)

The good news is that he was found not guilty of the most serious (and most trumped up) charge of "aiding the enemy." The bad news is that he was found guilty of 17 of the 20 charges he faced and guilty in amended form of 4 other counts. He faces a potential of more than a life-time in prison. And most importantly, the real criminal, the U.S. government, has still not been charged for its crimes.

Manning was also found guilty of "wrongfully and wantonly" causing to be published on the internet intelligence belonging to the US, "having knowledge that intelligence published on the internet is accesible to the enemy". That guilty ruling could still have widest ramifications for news organisations working on investigations relating to US national security.

The matter now enters the sentencing phase with arguments to be made by both sides. The need for the public to weigh in on this in the realm of public opinion is going to be decisive. It is the public who is the enemy that the U.S. government is worried that Manning shared information with. It is in the court of public opinion in which the U.S. government must be found guilty. Whose verdict will determine history? The U.S. government's verdict against Bradley Manning for revealing the truth to the world? Or Bradley Manning's verdict against the U.S. government for its commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity? Which verdict will be the people's verdict? Will it be to side with and exonerate those in authority who have committed and continue to commit unspeakable crimes, and who minute by minute spy on us all and lie to us constantly? Or will the people's verdict be to hold high heroes of the people like Bradley Manning and condemn and pronounce guilty those who seek to censor the truth and persecute truth-tellers?

War criminals prosecute and persecute a soldier so upset about seeing these war crimes being committed in his name and our names that he uncovered these crimes. Meanwhile, the real criminals, the torturers and the assassins using drones, are in charge and treated as the law abiders when they are the biggest criminals of all!

See the Steering Committee of World Can't Wait's Statement on the Bradley Manning verdict here.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 31 Jul 2013 15:05:54 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/bradley-manning-verdict-is-in.htmlGhoulish Humor From Those Who Rule Over Ushttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/ghoulish-humor-from-those-who-rule-over-us.html
Ghoulish Humor From Those Who Rule Over Us

Partisan lines and ideological disagreements faded away inside the darkened conference hall, as a parade of American securitocrats from administrations both past and present appeared on stage to defend endless global warfare and total information awareness while uniting in a single voice of condemnation against a single whistleblower bunkered inside the waiting room of Moscow International Airport: Edward Snowden.

With perhaps one notable exception, none of the high-flying reporters junketed to Aspen to act as interlocutors seemed terribly interested in interrogating the logic of the war on terror. The spectacle was a perfect window into the world of access journalism, with media professionals brown-nosing national security elites committed to secrecy and surveillance, avoiding overly adversarial questions but making sure to ask the requisite question about how much Snowden has caused terrorists to change their behavior.

I want to highlight just three of the points touched upon in Blumenthal's article, which readers should check out in its entirety at OpEd News.

If you’re not ok with seeing your government persecute whistleblowers and truth-tellers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden;

If you’re not ok with your government spying on the whole world;

If you’re not ok with your government demanding and expecting that U.S. soldiers and U.S. diplomats commit war crimes and crimes against humanity on a daily basis;

If you’re not ok with your president being judge, jury, and executioner and deciding who will live and die by assassinating people with drones, including hundreds of children;

If you're not ok with your government preventively and indefinitely detaining people without charges and torturing them;

If you’re not ok with racist sociopaths like George Zimmerman getting away with murder and blacks and browns being profiled, stopped and searched, mass incarcerated, tortured, and slain for being black and brown;

…If you didn’t get enough first time around, go fuck yourself and get some more.”

(shoots machine gun).

“You get that? You get that one? Huh? You bunch of fucking cock suckers.” –Mark Kessler

Displaying the confidence and maturity that men reach around their 42nd month of life, Gilberton, PA police chief Mark Kessler makes numerous implied threats via Youtube. Kessler is a provocateur, a ranting raver who does not back down and escalates his rhetoric in the hopes of getting a rise.

I’m writing for your immediate help in signing, circulating and raising $15,000 to publish the “Emergency Call! Join Us in Stopping Torture in U.S. Prisons!” as a full-page paid ad in the Los Angeles Times as soon as possible. This will give broad, crucial public support to California prisoners, now on the 18th day of their hunger strike against long-term solitary confinement and other abuses, whose health and lives hang in the balance.

The California Department of Corrections (CDCR) has “refused to negotiate or even address the strikers’ five demands,” say mediators for prisoners, and has “breached international human rights obligations by taking punitive measures against prisoners on hunger strike,” according to Amnesty International. These measures include increased isolation, harsher conditions, and at Pelican Bay reportedly blasting “cold air into their cells” and confiscating “fluids, hygiene products and legal materials.”

Another juror has come forward from the Zimmerman case, Maddy, on ABC’s Good Morning America. Unlike Juror B37, the other juror to be interviewed so far, Maddy is not sitting in the shadows and she allowed her face to be shown. Also unlike Juror B37, who clearly identifies with Zimmerman and sees the events from his perspective, Maddy is in turmoil over her role in the verdict. She is a mother of eight children and Puerto Rican and says that she is having trouble sleeping and eating because she feels that she let Trayvon and his parents down: “In our hearts we felt he was guilty.” As she and the other jurors understood their instructions and Florida’s laws, however, she felt they had no choice but to find him innocent of a murder that she is certain he committed.

Four major factors led to this conundrum for the jurors.

First, the judge, Debra Nelson, ruled in pre-trial hearings that no one could refer to this incident in the trial as racially motivated. Maddy says in her ABC interview that she still holds that this case was not racial in nature. For tens of millions of people in this country, and hundreds of millions if they were being honest with themselves, however, this case is obviously about race: Zimmerman would not have been stalking Trayvon and he would not have killed Trayvon otherwise.

In closing arguments today in the Bradley Manning trial, prosecutor Major Ashden Fein argued that Manning was out to make a name for himself in becoming a whistleblower. As part of the government's evidence for that, according to the CBS report, Fein cited Manning's sign off in his message to Wikileaks: "Have a good day."

My, my. He said that? He must have invented the phrase just to show his glee that he was just so delighted to be revealing war crimes to the world. He must have thought, "This is just so peechy keen, I'm going to become famous and the U.S. government and the U.S. military, well, of course they're not going to get mad at what I've revealed and try to persecute me. I'm going to have such a fine time of it in the wake of this."

To accept the government's argument, you have to believe that people who stick their necks out for a cause can't possibly be motivated by a belief in something bigger than their own ego.

There are a handful of directors who always prompt me to venture out and endure the American multiplex experience. These are James Cameron, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Michel Gondry, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Baz Luhrmann.

Now I believe Gatsby is a good film, and you should see it, but it’s not a truly great film. I also believe that I’m onto why that is, which will take some spoilers, after the jump.

So see the film. But if you want to hear me bicker and bitch and tear the thing apart…

Baz Luhrmann went to exceptional lengths to engineer Gatsby in his image. He committed to a 3-D experience, and it shows. The usual 3-D chicanery pops out and slides by, almost constantly. This I didn’t mind, and it makes for another element to keep the eyes from getting too used to the view. That’s not such a bad thing. I saw Life of Pi in 3-D as well, and sat mesmerized the entire two hours (better film by the way).

It has been officially confirmed. The crippled Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan is leaking highly contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. This is continuing by the minute causing great concern not only for Japan, but for all nations bordering on the Pacific Ocean, including the United States, Canada, Russia and most Pacific Island nations. Officials finally admitted this alarming news for the first time.

...

TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono said that radioactive water leaking from the wrecked reactors is likely to have run into the underground water system, before joining the ocean, and might therefore be the result of initial leaks to the underground system spotted in 2011.

Ono added that officials believe a leak is possible as underground water levels fluctuate in accordance with tide movements and rainfall.

Meanwhile, the operator said the number of plant workers with thyroid radiation exposures exceeding threshold levels for increased cancer risks was noticeably higher than earlier reports.

See also this earlier article that I wrote about this disaster and the larger context of it in June 2012.

When I was a teenager I spent part of a summer in Washington, D.C. attending along with other teens an introduction to Capitol Hill politics. We were bussed around to various politicians’ offices and got to meet with several of them. I also got to find out what a miserable humid hellhole D.C. was in the summer.

This was in 1968 when Eugene McCarthy was challenging President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic Party nomination and Nelson Rockefeller was challenging Richard Nixon for the GOP nomination. 1968 was also the highpoint of the 1960s: all delightful hell was breaking loose in the country and world. Despite that political upheaval, I was still very naïve about politics. I was more into Zen and philosophy and regarded politics with interest but with a certain amount of detachment. Here I was, after all, in high school during the peak year of the Sixties, and I identified with Rockefeller as a “liberal” Republican! I actually represented Rockefeller in a mock debate and was congratulated on my unusual arguments by our college age mentors. I regarded McCarthy’s run for the nomination as foolhardy as he would never get the nomination, repeating the nostrums being circulated in the mass media. What did I know? Needless to say, the 1971 Attica uprising and Rockefeller’s order to crush the uprising and kill prisoners wouldn’t be for three years yet.

It would have to wait until I entered Harvard for me to become more engaged with the political storms of the times. I remember in particular walking to class in the Spring of my first year in Harvard Yard and seeing a small picket line of students walking in a spirited circle in front of a very big white spray paint job on the building wall: “FOUR DEAD IN OHIO.” But that is another story.

In any case, during this 1968 adventure on Capitol Hill one of the other high schoolers in our group was a nephew of National Review’s founder and famous right-wing intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr. This nephew worshipped his uncle, taking on his mannerisms and speech patterns in very exaggerated form, including leaning far back in his chair with his face upturned and tilted and toying with a pencil. One day Buckley was on TV and his nephew sat close to the TV and adopted an adulatory pose in front of his marvelous uncle. One of the more vivid memories I have from that time.

This OpEd appeared in Al-Jazeeraon July 19, 2013. Reprinted with permission from the author. We have made a few small edits for typos. For articles that link these issues to a larger context and analysis, see here and here.

The now confirmed appointment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as President of the University of California should raise loud alarms for anyone concerned about the present state and future development of UC, for three reasons.

First, there is the manner in which her selection was made. Her candidacy was developed in the course of a secretive process [Editor's note: See below the Regents' Rules for Presidential Searches that this search expressly violated] that excluded meaningful participation of UC faculty, thus departing from the transparency of information and free exchange of ideas to which the University of California and the Academy more broadly aspire. Such secrecy not only violates the governing principles of the American Association of University Professors, it is also a process from which other university systems, including those in Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Minnesota, Vermont, Nebraska, Florida, and Wisconsin, are increasing moving away in the hiring of senior administrators.

Cornel West was interviewed today by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Dr. West does not hold back in this passionate, loving, sharp, and angry interview. He draws the lines unequivocally in this discussion.

"'I think we have to acknowledge that President Obama has very little moral authority at this point, because we know anybody who tries to rationalize the killing of innocent peoples, [is] a criminal -- George Zimmerman is a criminal -- but President Obama is a global George Zimmerman,' pointing to Obama's attempt to rationalize the killing of innocent children in U.S. drone strikes."

One of the most significant things about what Dr. West says in this interview is that he is putting forward, as another prominent black leader, a wholly different path for black people and everyone else to hew to than what Obama is doing. Obama is playing on how people see him and drawing upon his very considerable rhetorical skills to rope people into accepting and/or even applauding grave crimes against the people, both in the domestic arena (e.g., the New Jim Crow, about which Obama has nothing to say, Stop and Frisk, about which Obama also has nothing to say, and the exoneration of a killer of a young black brother, Trayvon Martin) and in the international arena (e.g., his drone attacks and other war crimes) and in both foreign and domestic matters (e.g., the universal NSA spying and the persecution of whistleblowers). At a time when being confused about what's actually going on is so consequential, and being by contrast clear about what is happening and what needs to be done is so terribly important, his words are especially valuable. The co-existence of these two men and their views which clash so dramatically highlights the stakes involved at this juncture.

First, a personal story that helps to illustrate how racism can be so pervasive as to escape notice. A faculty colleague of mine at Ohio University where I was a Visiting Professor for a year told me a story about a brain tumor that he had when he was much younger. This was back in the day before CAT Scans and MRIs and physicians had to rely solely for pictures of the body on X-rays. He had all of the symptoms of a brain tumor, including blinding, debilitating headaches, but each time they X-rayed his head, the doctors could find no evidence of a tumor. Finally, frustrated by the negative test results, his primary physician said that "you must have a brain tumor" and ordered another X-ray of his brain. Back then, a brain X-ray involved draining fluid from the skull ahead of time so it was excruciatingly painful to undergo. This time, convinced that it had to be there, they realized why they had missed seeing the tumor before: it was so large that it filled the film's frame. The doctors had been looking for something smaller and missed it because it was so large.

The first juror in the Zimmerman case to be interviewed,[i] identified as Juror B37[ii], tried to get a book deal from her experiences but the public backlash towards her made her agent withdraw from the deal and the juror back away from her hopes for profit. More to the point, she told Cooper, as summarized by CNN.com:

[S]he had "no doubt" he [Zimmerman] feared for his life in the final moments of his struggle with Trayvon Martin, and that was the definitive factor in the verdict.

You have to wonder about her certainty that Zimmerman “feared for his life.”

Did Trayvon fear for his life? Who had more reason to fear for their life? The stalker or the one being stalked? The guy with the gun or the one with the Skittles? If self-defense is warranted here in this struggle, which is what the verdict says, then how come the teenager who was minding his own business and not stalking anyone had no right to his own self-defense, including, if necessary - and clearly it was necessary because Zimmerman killed him - using deadly force?

Some people have mimicked defense attorney Mark O’Mara’s assertion that the real aggressor was Trayvon because he allegedly could have gone home minutes sooner. You’re the aggressor because you’re not behind closed doors a few minutes earlier? You become the predator by being outside? By the same token, Zimmerman could have decided not to track Trayvon. He could have gone home long before, he could have listened to the police dispatcher who told him to stay out of it, but Zimmerman has the right to be out packing a gun but a black teen doesn’t have a right to go to the store for snacks?

The only way that you can find Trayvon guilty for his own death and Zimmerman not guilty of murder is to buy into a fanciful theory that is contradicted by the physical evidence that Trayvon became the stalker.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Wed, 24 Jul 2013 07:14:35 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/the-zimmerman-trial-jurors-and-the-invisibility-of-racism.htmlWhen All is Said and Nothing's Done: Obama on Zimmerman Verdicthttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/when-all-is-said-and-nothing-s-done-obama-on-zimmerman-verdict.html
When All is Said and Nothing's Done: Obama on the Zimmerman Verdict

By Dennis Loo (7/20/13)

Yesterday Obama, without benefit of a teleprompter, spoke at some length about the Zimmerman verdict. In so doing he demonstrated how exceptionally skillful he is at weaving rhetorical emphathy to a program of reinforcing the chains that bind black people to violent subordination under this system. There is finally a black president of the United States and he can feel the pain of Trayvon's family and black Americans because he's been followed too, and it is impossible to imagine such words coming from the mouth of George Bush.

But what are you left with after this virtuoso performance? When all is said, and he said a lot (although also leaving out a WHOLE lot, such as his continuing silence on the mass incarceration of blacks and Latinos), what can people hang their hats on? What justice has been done? Obama says the verdict has been arrived at, and he did not revise his earlier statement right after the outrageous verdict, calling for people to react with "calm reflection." "Calm reflection"?! This verdict paints a great big target on the back of every black person.

I am traveling today but will have further remarks on this speech and situation after I am done traveling.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 21 Jul 2013 01:35:46 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/when-all-is-said-and-nothing-s-done-obama-on-zimmerman-verdict.htmlWhy Should We Have Any Confidence in a Justice Department Investigation Bringing Justice?http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/why-should-we-have-any-confidence-in-a-justice-department-investigation-bringing-justice.html
Why Should We Have Any Confidence in a Justice Department Investigation Bringing Justice?

Editor's Note: Obama's Justice Department is the same DOJ that has blocked torture victims from being able to sue for damages in court, declaring that allowing evidence of their torture by the U.S. and clients of the U.S. would reveal "national security" secrets (as if the world didn't all know that the U.S. is and has been torturing people), the same DOJ that is going after whistleblowers, not against those the whistleblowers have revealed to be committing crimes, the same DOJ that presides over the mass incarceration of millions (including the torture of many) here in the U.S. Why, asks Debra Sweet, should we look to this same DOJ and this same president for relief and justice for Trayvon, his family, and the millions who now have a big target on their backs as a result of this atrocious verdict?

Trayvon Martin

“I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son” said Barack Obama a day after the verdict of “not guilty” in the George Zimmerman trial. “We are a nation of laws, and the jury has spoken.”

Attorney General Eric Holder assured the NAACP that he is concerned about the case, and that “the Justice Department has an open investigation into it.”

The message here is that we — those righteously outraged at the stalking death of a black youth being justified by a jury — should remain calm. And we are told to wait on justice at the hands of a system built on slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the New Jim Crow of mass incarceration. Our protests are the problem, not the underlying injustice, particularly according to Democratic Party leaders, whose purpose is to keep us passive, while they appear to “handle” the problem.

Reuters is reporting that three days after George Zimmerman was acquitted in Sanford, Florida, in Jacksonville, Florida, "Marissa Alexander, 32, an African American ... was sentenced to a mandatory 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot into the wall of her home in 2010 to end a violent argument with her abusive husband." No one was injured by her warning shot into the wall, but prosecutors charged her and now have convicted her, claiming that by firing the warning shot she was endangering her own children.

This outrageous decision stands not only in stark contrast to Zimmerman's treatment on the racial dimension but also illustrates the unjust treatment that women receive when they stand up against abuse - in defending herself the state charged her with being a bad mother. So you have the oppression of women manifested in this case as well as a gross injustice undoubtedly because she's not white.

Alexander filed a "Stand Your Ground" claim, but a judge ruled against her because Alexander chose to go back into the house with her gun. [Unlike Zimmerman who of course chose to go after Trayvon].

A jury took just 12 minutes to find her guilty of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Because Alexander fired a gun in the incident, Florida's "10-20-Life" mandatory-minimum sentencing guidelines required the judge to sentence her to 20 years in prison.

At the time, Alexander had an active restraining order against her husband and she carried a concealed weapons permit.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Fri, 19 Jul 2013 06:10:01 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/when-deadly-aggressors-have-to-act-in-self-defense.htmlBrazil and the FIFA World Cuphttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/brazil-and-the-fifa-world-cup.html
Brazil and the FIFA World Cup

By Walter Hsu (7/16/13)

Amidst the glory and pride associated with the FIFA World Cup lurks an ugly side. While enormous stadiums and modernization projects are being constructed across Brazil, government officials cling to “trickle-down” economics to justify the taxpayer dollars spent on the event. Do these construction projects create jobs? Yes, there are thousands of Brazilian workers welding beams and laying down concrete, but these jobs are not long-term options. The rapid expansion’s aftermath for international sporting events in China resembles the famous Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea: vast, empty spaces with an almost eerie vibe. The fourteen new stadiums in Brazil will do nothing for citizens after the confetti is dropped and fans head home. A janitorial staff will work a few hours a week to keep the crows from nesting in the rafters, but the Brazilian economy’s nature does not lend itself to the rock concerts or conventions that rationalize arenas’ construction in the U.S.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Tue, 16 Jul 2013 18:15:42 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/brazil-and-the-fifa-world-cup.htmlA &quot;Fair Trial?&quot; George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin and the System of &quot;Justice&quot;http://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/a-fair-trial-george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin-and-the-system-of-justice.html
A "Fair Trial?" George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin and the System of "Justice"

By Dennis Loo (7/15/13)

A number of people say in the wake of the "not guilty" verdict of George Zimmerman in his killing of Trayvon Martin that this was a "fair trial."

As an aside, many of the same people now expressing satisfaction that "justice has been done" can be heard frequently complaining that victims of crime don't get their due in criminal courts and that all of the rights go to the suspect/defendant. This verdict exonerating defendant Zimmerman of wrongdoing should surely quell their complaints. After all, Zimmerman is the victim in this case, not Trayvon who lies six feet under because of Zimmerman. Or so one must conclude from the comments of those who celebrate this verdict.

Let's, however, consider this notion that this was a "fair trial." A close examination of this view reveals the underlying institutional and ideological barriers to someone like Trayvon Martin getting his day in court. Trayvon. along with black people in general, were in fact the real defendants in this case. And this verdict finds Trayvon and black people guilty, guilty, guilty.

Today's New York Times ("In Zimmerman Case, Self-Defense Was Hard to Topple") analyzes the verdict by arguing that Zimmerman's self-defense claim was bolstered by prosecutors' missteps at trial, by police slipups, and that given the standards of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, it was from the beginning going to be almost impossible for the prosecution to prevail against Zimmerman and his version of events.

The NYT article, however, shares the underlying assumptions that led to Trayvon's being cast as suspicious-by-definition and as the aggressor in this case.

]]> ddloo@cpp.edu (Super User)Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:35:46 GMThttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/a-fair-trial-george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin-and-the-system-of-justice.htmlWhat If George Zimmerman's Version of Events Is True? The Logical Flaw at the Heart of This Verdicthttp://www.dennisloo.com/Articles/what-if-george-zimmerman-s-version-of-events-is-true-the-logical-flaw-at-the-heart-of-this-verdict.html
What If George Zimmerman's Version of Events Is True? The Logical Flaw at the Heart of This Verdict

By Dennis Loo (7/14/13)

For the sake of argument and to illustrate a central point, let us assume that the version of events that George Zimmerman claims in his pre-trial statements is entirely true.

Shall we see what is left after we examine this even just a little bit?

Zimmerman declined to take the stand in his defense, no doubt because his legal team could see that Zimmerman would surely look like a liar if the prosecutors had been given a chance to subject him to cross-examination on the stand. This would likely be true even if the prosecutors proceeded in the half-hearted manner in which they conducted the entire trial. The prosecutor’s office, it should be remembered, was unwilling to bring charges against Zimmerman in the first place and were only forced to do so when public protest made them do it. Once in the courtroom they carried out their case in at best, a C- effort.

But, let us give Zimmerman’s story 100% credibility and assume that it’s all true.

He says that he had to shoot Trayvon in the heart – the firearms' forensics expert showed that when Zimmerman pulled the trigger the muzzle was up against Trayvon’s heart – because he was being beaten by Trayvon and feared for his life. His shooting Trayvon in the heart was in self-defense. This is what the jury found: that there was reasonable doubt that Zimmerman shot Trayvon in something other than self-defense and therefore they could not convict.

Let us further assume that Trayvon laid in wait for him and jumped out at him and got the better of him, even though this version is contradicted by the audio track and dialogue in the cell phone call between Trayvon and his friend Rachel Jeantel. It is also contradicted by Jeantel’s testimony about that call and also wholly contradicted by the fact that Zimmerman, as everyone knows and Zimmerman admits, was pursuing Trayvon. There would not have been any encounter between Trayvon and